Lily Potter and the Triwizard Cup
by ElephantPatronus
Summary: Lily Potter lives in the shadow of a world-famous father and a legion of older cousins. But when Hogwarts hosts the Triwizard Tournament in her sixth year, she is caught up in events which could jeapordise the safety of the entire wizarding world.
1. Dinner and Death Metal

**I started this story a couple of years ago, but recently decided to rewrite it because there was a lot more I wanted to include. The new and improved version will have more characters, more plotlines and more general amazingness!**

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><p>The summer holidays had been relatively uneventful for Lily Potter, at least by her family's standards.<p>

Nobody had encountered any near-death experiences, unlike last year when Dominique had decided to go canoeing over Loch Ness and run into an especially irritable kelpie. Nothing of particular significance had been blown up, not even by James and Fred, who, at nineteen and twenty respectively, usually made a beeline for anything flammable. And any arguments which had arisen over the course of the long, lazy weeks flitting between the Burrow, Grimmauld Place and the various other Weasley places of residence had been quickly smoothed over by Lucy, the family peacemaker, before any death threats could be issued.

This comparative harmony may have had something to do with the fact that, for the majority of the family, it wasn't actually the school holidays. Rose and Al had just completed their final year of Hogwarts and were planning a range of swashbuckling adventures for the months to come – getting Rose to shut up about her world trip with her boyfriend, ex-head boy Michael Gardner, proved a task almost equal to Dom's canoeing ordeal. So the only Weasleys who would actually be returning to school in September were Roxanne, for her seventh year, and Lily and Hugo, for their sixth.

Early July had brought exam results: six 'Outstanding' NEWTs for Rose, and a respectable mix of 'E's and 'A's for Al. Lily was pleased to discover that she'd received mostly 'O's in her OWLs, with the notable exception of Care of Magical Creatures, in which a rogue Fire Crab had set her hair alight and nobody had noticed for a full minute. In the examiner's defence, she did tend to look a bit like a flaming torch anyway, with her masses of deep, vivid orange waves – but she hadn't deserved the 'D' he'd given her, she thought crossly. Still, she'd done better than poor Hugo, whose panic over the exams had driven him to such obsessive timetable-making that he'd barely had time to actually revise for them.

Now, as the final days of the summer gained momentum at an alarming rate and the beginning of term sped closer, the three youngest Weasleys busied themselves with last-minute shopping trips to Diagon Alley and the mountains of homework they'd been ignoring for the past couple of months. Lily and Hugo found it impossible to start a conversation with anyone without ending up on the topic of NEWT options, receiving such conflicting advice from their various family members that if they'd listened to all of it they would be taking every subject the school had to offer.

"Of course, Neville would be thrilled if you went for Herbology –"

"I had Robins for Defence and it was brilliant, easily my favourite subject –"

"Take Potions, and please remember to give that Professor Calder my undying love –"

"Mum!" yelled Roxanne from the kitchen, "That's disgusting, he's, like, twenty years younger than you!"

"_And_ mind-blowingly gorgeous," grinned Lily's aunt Angelina, winking at her husband George.

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><p>The day before they were set to depart, Lily and her cousins were greeted with some surprising news: Al and his band had a gig. And they were invited.<p>

"Only you have to absolutely _swear_ you won't embarrass me too much," he pleaded, staring at them all earnestly. "There's a guy coming from the _Weird Sisters'_ record company and we really, really need to impress him."

"Al, we don't even feel the need to embarrass you any more," responded James, seizing the opportunity to take a dig at his brother's new haircut, "You do so well by yourself."

Evening came, and they Flooed themselves to an appallingly-lit venue, magically concealed behind some recycling bins in a dingy Camden alleyway. It wasn't a small place, but it was crammed: throngs of teenagers, many of whom Lily recognised from school, were standing around chattering excitedly.

The arrival of their group caused a ripple of murmuring. Lily was used to this, and so were the others – it was an occupational hazard of having the saviours of the wizarding world for parents – but it did get a little annoying, especially now that Victoire had her face on all the 'Sleekeazy's Hair Products' adverts and James was a professional Quidditch player. It wasn't that she resented her relatives' success, of course; but sometimes it felt like an awful lot of attention to live up to.

Lily blinked quickly, trying to make out her surroundings in the gloom. The ceiling was low, and a chalkboard beside the stage read, 'Performing tonight: _CRUCIATUS_' in large, careful lettering which changed colour every few seconds.

"_Cruciatus_," snorted Rose, "I've been trying to think of a stupider name and I just can't. There isn't one."

"Agreed," said Lily, struggling for a better view. The stage was empty so far, except for a technician who was pointing his wand at the instruments to adjust their volumes. "I thought the whole death-and-destruction thing was just a phase, I thought he'd grow out of it."

Rose nodded solemnly. "We all did."

"I think I could handle it if it weren't for the hair. Every time I look at him I just want to keel over laughing."

"Me too," said Rose, craning her neck over the crowd. "But there are lots of people here though, aren't there? I'd say a couple of hundred."

"Weren't they quite popular at school?" asked Victoire. "I mean, they've been playing for a while now."

"Yeah, that's true. People went wild when they played at the leavers' ball."

Someone squeezed in between Lily and Victoire, and she turned to find a young man with a shock of turquoise hair standing next to her. "Hi, Teddy. Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

"Your dad gave me the evening off. Couldn't miss Al's big night, could I?"

"You could have tried," she grimaced, as the drummer walked onstage dressed head-to-toe in black leather. Beneath huge quantities of hair and eyeliner, he was just about recognisable as Al's friend Benji Kirkwood, a cheerful boy with a passion for Gobstones.

Teddy smiled. "Don't be mean, Lily."

"I wasn't –"

"_Sh_!" He pressed a finger to his lips as the rest of the band came on. Al picked up a guitar shaped like a skull, which growled at the audience as he slipped the strap over his shoulder and played a single, screeching chord. This prompted such ear-splitting screams that Lily was forced to put her fingers in her ears, and saw Rose do the same beside her.

Centre-stage, Al pointed his wand to his throat, and Lily saw his lips form the word '_Sonorus'._ Then he roared.

It was like having her brain taken out and used as a Quaffle by a gang of intoxicated goblins. Al roared, actually roared, with the volume of sixteen fully-grown dragons and, instead of running for the nearest exit as any sane person surely would, the audience screamed merrily back at him while behind him the drums, bass and keyboard crunched and twanged their way through the opening bars to '_Fiendfyre'_.

Lily could see Rose trying to shout something to her but couldn't make out a single word. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if her eardrums had already been completely shredded and she had lost her hearing for good – when Al started singing.

Singing wasn't the right word at all. Vocalising the deepest, darkest corners of the human soul didn't even come close. About thirty seconds into _Cruciatus_' first song, Lily realised that the band's name wasn't supposed to be witty, cool or attention-grabbing. It was just a very frank description of what their music did to you.

"_You will never escape,_

_Trapped in the inferno of my broken heeeeaaart!_

_Can't choose between love and hate,_

_The demons are tearing me apaaaart!_" Al was snarling –

"_So let's burn together now_

_On this nightmare pyyyyre,_

_I still don't know how_

_To put out your Fiendfyyyyyre!_"

Gradually, the band played their way through '_Warlock of the Abyss'_, _'Manticore', 'Dementor's Kiss' _and '_Murderous Horntail', _Lily sneaking glances at her cousins to check that they were in as much torment as she was. Louis and Roxanne had their hands clamped over their ears and Lucy was clearly fighting very hard not to do the same. Molly was reading her book, having given up completely and cast a temporary deafness charm on herself. Victoire was cowering into Teddy' shoulder. Hugo was wide-eyed, frozen with terror, and Rose kept massaging her temples. Fred, James and Dom, however, seemed to be enjoying themselves: Dom had entered completely into the spirit of it and was yelling along with the rest of the room, and Fred and James appeared to be slow-dancing, to the aggravation of the audience members they kept bumping into.

After what seemed like years in purgatory, Al let loose one final, resounding death howl and left the stage. Lily cheered weakly and found herself being dragged towards the door by Hugo.

"Aah!" he gasped as they emerged behind a wheelie bin. "Freedom!"

"I didn't think my eardrums were going to survive that," said Lily darkly.

"I don't think mine did." Hugo cradled his head in his arms, breathing deeply.

Rose appeared beside them looking dazed. "That was... traumatising."

"Well, we're alive," observed Lily, feeling that it was important to count their blessings. "Do you think we should go and tell Al how, um, wonderful he was?"

"Nope, he's got about a million friends doing that already. And he did tell us not to embarrass him."

"So it follows logically that we have to embarrass him." Lily made for the door but was stopped by Fred, coming the other way.

Tall, and made even taller by his enormous afro, Fred Weasley was the sort of guy who just oozed coolness: he had always had the enviable ability of being able to befriend anyone who crossed his path. "Don't bother, we've already tried," he sighed. "It's no good. He's talking to that Malfoy kid."

Rose pulled a face. "Ugh, Scorpius? I can't stand him, let's leave now."

"I thought he was meant to be all right?" asked Hugo. "For a Malfoy, I mean? Al likes him, anyway."

"He is _not_ all right," said Rose, "And since when do you trust Al's judgment on anything?" She gestured inside the building, where the stage and _Cruciatus_' macabre instruments were visible.

"At least he's not in the band," grinned Lily.

After a few minutes, she and Fred managed to turn Al a satisfactory shade of scarlet by discussing his childhood love for Celestina Warbeck within earshot of the man from the record company. Feeling that it was time for a speedy getaway, they Flooed themselves back to the Burrow, where Granny had prepared a fantastic end-of-holidays feast.

"All right, dears?" She bustled through the kitchen to the long dining table set up outside under a marquee, shepherding small army of dishes before her with her wand. "How was the concert?"

Lily and Fred exchanged glances, unsure quite how to describe the experience. "It was –"

"HUGO WEASLEY! If you so much as _think _about touching that cheesecake I will curse you from here to Timbuktu, you ungrateful little toerag!"

Hugo emerged from behind a tiered, strawberry-encrusted cheesecake, looking a little sheepish. Granny's expression softened.

"Good boy. Now go and wash your hands, there's a dear."

The others returned gradually, some stumbling shell-shocked from the fireplace and others appearing with '_pop'_s around the house, still looking severely shaken. When Al finally arrived – Lily and Fred making themselves conveniently scarce at the sight of him – they settled down at the table to tuck in.

"So. Triwizard Tournament this year, eh kids?" said Teddy, shovelling sausages into his mouth.

"Yep," said Roxanne. "And we're not kids."

"Of course not." Teddy smirked. "You thinking of entering?"

Roxanne shrugged: "Not my thing."

"What about you, Lily? Will you be old enough by then?"

Lily considered this. She supposed she ought to be concentrating on her schoolwork, but if the cutoff point was after her birthday – and she wasn't sure it would be – well, she had to admit there was a certain appeal to the idea of being champion. Of course it was dangerous, and time-consuming as well, but it was an incredible opportunity. And for somebody who'd spent her entire life in the shadow of her parents and older brothers... "I don't know," she said.

Dom leaned in from a little way down the table. "You should go for it, it's fun."

"Yeah, someone's got to prove that we're not all as hopeless as you were," sniggered James, earning himself a punch on the shoulder.

"Merlin himself would not have stood a chance against that Durmstrang girl," said Dom, rubbing her fist. "You saw her – biceps like Quaffles."

Lily sighed. The problem with being practically the youngest in such a large family was that whatever you did, you could be certain that somebody else had done it before you. Even if Dom had lost by an appalling margin five years ago after accidentally Transfiguring herself into a racoon for most of the final task, Lily's own father had still won the thing the very first year it was revived.

She turned her attention to the other end of the table, where Harry, Hermione and Percy were ranting about some Ministry official. "You should have reported him," Percy was saying, "That's what the anti-harassment policies are in place for, you know."

Hermione nodded. "I just don't feel like there's any point. We all know he'll worm his way out of it and we have more important things to worry about."

"Of course you do, of course. I just can't stand the idea that he'd ever be considered for Minister, that's all."

Harry grunted in agreement through a mouthful of steak and swallowed. "He's dangerous, I've been trying to convince Waffling for Merlin knows how long." He stuffed another forkful in and chewed viciously. "And you won't believe what happened the other evening. He invited himself over, totally unprompted, and then spent hours lecturing me on how I ought to be doing my job."

"Really?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "And what did he suggest?"

"Oh... Arresting anyone who criticises the Ministry, going easy on people who practise the Unforgivable Curses as hobbies, that kind of thing... It was awful. It was like he was – just – _waiting_ for me to agree with him!"

"He probably was," said Hermione. "He's probably looking for allies, and you can see why he'd want you."

"Well, he won't try again, that's for sure. I told him exactly what I thought of him and his nasty backstabbing politics."

"I bet you did," said Hermione, amused.

"And can you blame me? Disgusting man even had the house-elf in tears when he left."

Here Hermione pursed her lips. After years of campaigning for elfish welfare she had been forced to concede house-elves the right to work unpaid, but the merest whiff of mistreatment still drove her apoplectic.

Granny started bringing out the desserts and Lily jumped up to help clear the table. "Aaw," cooed James as she took his plate, "Look at little Lillikins doing everything without magic."

"Two months," she said, holding up two fingers threateningly, "Then I'll be able to hex you into next week, so shut it."

James's smile stayed fixed on his face but Lily noticed his knuckles tighten on his glass: her Tonsil-Twisting Hexes were infamous.

She moved down the table stacking plates: "Well, at least Waffling has managed to fob him off to Greece for the moment," Harry was saying. "Thanks, Lils." He mopped up the last of his gravy and handed her his plate before continuing, "He's out of the way for now."

Rose was holding forth about her trip again to Al and Lucy, detailing for the billionth time how she and her boyfriend planned to spend their fortnight in South Africa. "Michael's really interested in Witch Doctors, so we're going to do some research into _ngoma _while we're there. You know, it's fascinating, magic really isn't stigmatised there in the same way. _Sangomas _have always been an integral part of their communities."

Lucy nodded along with a patient smile and Al mimed hanging himself to Lily, which Rose saw and did not find amusing. She kicked him under the table and he released a howl not unlike the ones he'd been producing earlier in the name of music, prompting Lily to retreat quickly into the kitchen.

She found Dom at the sink, orchestrating the washing-up so that the brushes and sponges seemed to be performing some kind of complicated dance routine. She was humming along as she did so, flicking her wand back and forth in time.

"Nice," said Lily, dumping her stack of plates on the counter.

"Do you like it? I've been trying to choreograph all the Weird Sisters' songs. It makes chores much more entertaining."

Feeling that she'd rather avoid Rose until she'd finished beating her brother to a pulp, Lily picked up a sponge and started rinsing some of the cutlery.

"You should go for the Tournament, you know." She looked up. Dom's expression was surprisingly earnest. "I think you could be champion, I really do."

"Yeah..." She still wasn't sure. On the one hand, the prospect of thrilling adventures and eternal glory was, admittedly, appealing. On the other hand, it was also slightly nauseating and she did sort of value having the use of all her limbs. "So what are your plans for this year?"

Dom sighed at the change of subject but didn't push the issue. "Oh, nothing much. Managed to swing a part-time job at Eeylops, so we'll see how long that lasts..."

Lily rolled her eyes: "Good luck with that." Since Dom had left Hogwarts four years ago, it had become a family joke that she couldn't hold down a job for more than a couple of months. She'd tried her hand at practically everything: Curse Breaking, journalism, coaching an under-elevens Quidditch team, even a stint in Romania with Charlie and his dragons – but something always seemed to go wrong.

"Fred bet James five galleons I can make it till January, which is pretty generous considering I only managed a week in the last one."

"So maybe this time you try _not_ hitting any of the customers with an Ear-Shrivelling Curse?" suggested Lily.

"OK, first of all, he wasn't a customer, he was stalking me–"

This was plausible. With her shimmering strawberry-blonde hair, Veela looks and impish grin, Dom found it almost as easy to attract men as her sister did – keeping hold of them being another matter entirely.

"– and second of all, they overreacted massively. All he needed was a counter-curse, they didn't have to take him to St Mungo's."

George and Roxanne struggled past under heaps of gently flapping butterfly cakes. "Great work, Lily," called George, nodding to her cutlery-rinsing, which looked doubly pathetic beside Dom's spectacular display of dancing utensils. "Keep it up and you might have another teaspoon done by Monday."

She stuck her tongue out at him and reached for a cake fluttering off Roxanne's plate, only to have her hand slapped away. "No touching before it reaches the table, on pain of death. Granny's orders."

"Fine." She turned back to Dom. "Still, Eeylops, that's good. I had an owl from there."

"Did you? What kind?"

"Screech owl, a lovely grey one. She came to a bit of a sticky end when we used her to fly Decoy Detonators into Professor Mottershead's office, though."

"I bet she did, sounds like a suicide mission." Dom Summoned some tea towels and set them drying the plates.

"All right, girls? Nearly there." Granny came bustling inside for the last few dishes, although from what Lily could see the table was already about to collapse under the weight of the desserts crammed onto it.

"It looks delicious, Granny," she said, giving up on the cutlery and drying her hands.

"Thank you, dear." Suddenly Granny's eyes narrowed and she emitted a furious hissing sound. "HUGO WEASLEY! WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE CHEESECAKE?"

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><p><strong>So there's the new first chapter, I hope you liked it – please, if you feel so inclined, drop me a reviewfavourite/follow. Tell me what you hated, or want to see more of, and I'll see what I can do. Best reviews get... I don't know... virtual house points!**


	2. Students and Sorting

**Chapter 2 is here! Again, like, favourite, review... and enjoy.**

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><p>She was woken by a frantic knocking on the door of her bedroom. "Lily!" came her mother's voice from outside. "LILY!"<p>

"Mmm..." She slid out of the covers and onto her feet, still heavy with sleep. "What time is it?"

"Ten o'clock!" Ginny burst into the room and flung the curtains open. "The train leaves in an hour, and at this rate you're not going to be on it."

Lily glanced at the clock by her bed: it squeaked "Ten!" in confirmation.

"All right," she said, performing rapid calculations for how long it would take to dress, locate her possessions, pack them, eat and say goodbye to her family. Her conclusions weren't promising. "I'll be down in a minute."

"You'd better be," snarled Ginny, Disapparating with a '_pop'_.

Lily surveyed her room in horror. Clothes were strewn over the floor; books poked out from under the bed; her cauldron sat in the corner brimming with dirty laundry. She'd meant to wake up several hours earlier, telling herself she could pack in the morning. Her body clock had evidently had different ideas.

She started picking up clothes and throwing them into her trunk, pulling her jeans on as she did so. Robes, socks, tops and shoes were dumped in unceremoniously as she scrabbled around for a clean shirt. She found a relatively uncrumpled one lurking under her bedside table, shoved her arms through the sleeves, located a cardigan and donned that as well.

Textbooks went in. So did Potions equipment and ingredients, her pointed hat, a couple of chocolate frogs and a wizarding chess set with half the pieces missing. Scales and a telescope. Quills, mostly broken; four Galleons, some Sickles and a Knut; a tube of toothpaste.

She paused to apply a coat of bright red lipstick before tossing that in as well. The effect against her hair was almost blindingly colourful: it was similar to the bright Weasley orange but darker, redder, bearing hints of her paternal grandmother's shade.

"LILY!"

"I'm coming!" Stuffing her wand into her back pocket, she ran down the four flights of stairs to the kitchen, where her father and brothers were eating breakfast. "Can someone put my trunk downstairs, please?"

Harry looked up from his copy of the _Daily Prophet_ and flicked his wand. There were a few muffled thuds as the trunk sped down the stairs and along the hall. "Toast?" He proffered the toast rack.

"OK." She grabbed a slice and buttered it hastily. "How long do I have before Mum explodes?"

James pushed the marmalade towards her. "I'd say three minutes, max."

She groaned. "It's not fair. You're still in your dressing gown!"

He grinned and yawned at her lazily. "That, Lillikins, is because I've finished school."

"So go and work! Do your teammates know you still live with your parents?"

James's toast suddenly seemed to become very interesting and he nibbled at it in silence.

James played Chaser for the Wimbourne Wasps, whose popularity had soared when the Chosen One's eldest son had joined their ranks; a career choice which had, inevitably, sparked comparisons to Ginny's stint as Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies. It wasn't the only similarity between them. Lily got the impression the Ginny had enjoyed a practical joke every bit as much as James – and his erstwhile partner in crime, Fred – did, although perhaps not on quite such an epic scale. During Fred's last year, which had been Lily's third, the two of them had managed to slip Babbling Beverages into the entire stock of morning pumpkin juice, an incident which Lily maintained she had had nothing to do with whatsoever.

Al, as the middle child, was a different matter entirely. Perhaps being stuck between siblings as boisterous as James and Lily had exacerbated his natural shyness, but he had always held back in social situations and tended to alienate people with his dry sense of humour. Most of the family assumed that his gothic tendencies were a reaction against the inevitable pressure of being Harry Potter's son, which they may have been partly – but to Lily they fitted in comfortably with the pessimistic streak he had always possessed. And, death howls or not, it had to be said that he was an extremely talented musician.

"It's going to be weird at school, without either of you," she said. It had been weird enough when James had left – but this year she would be the only Potter at Hogwarts.

"It's going to be weird not being there," replied Al. "Still, the band have got some important shows lined up. It's going to be amazing."

Lily exchanged a glance with James, who satisfied himself by muttering, "Unforgettable, at least," almost inaudibly into his orange juice. Al didn't seem to notice.

After a minute or two Ginny entered, the tips of her ears a dangerous shade of pink. "Lily, Ron's here with the car, the others are all ready. You're holding everyone up."

"OK," said Lily through a mouthful of toast and marmalade, "I'm finished, I'm coming."

Her plate was whisked away and she said a brief goodbye to each of her family members. "Bye, James. Bye Al. Bye Dad." She gave her mother a careful hug, the sort you might give to something which might blow up at any moment. "Bye Mum. Love you."

"Love you too, darling," called Ginny as she sprinted up the stairs, down the corridor and through the front door. Ron waved at her from the car and she slid in the back next to Roxanne, a trunk squashed between them.

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><p>The journey seemed oddly quiet with only the four of them in the car. School runs over the past five years had been a mad rush of people and luggage, turning around countless times for forgotten items, James and Fred slipping dungbombs under the seats... Now it was just her, Hugo and Roxanne. It was going to be a strange year.<p>

Ron's driving kept them entertained as they navigated the Saturday-morning London traffic, Hugo cowering in the front seat and issuing warning yelps whenever they came too close to the other cars. "Dad! You're meant to _indicate_!"

They arrived at King's Cross without causing any accidents, which Ron considered, worryingly, something of an achievement; trunks, cauldrons and Roxanne's disgruntled eagle owl were loaded onto trolleys and they wheeled them through the barrier onto the platform.

"Well." Ron surveyed the three of them. "I suppose I don't have to worry about you lot getting into trouble – except maybe you, Lily."

Lily assumed an indignant expression. "That's rubbish. I hardly ever get caught!"

"Hm. Well, have a good time, all of you – work hard, and I'll see you at Christmas."

The train whistled, and Ron looked slightly sheepish. "Would it embarrass you if I gave you all a hug?"

The three of them replied variously in the affirmative.

"All right. Um, well... bye, kids." He stuck out his hand and they each shook it in turn, feeling faintly ridiculous.

"Bye, Dad."

"See you, Ron."

"Bye, Ron."

Lily and Hugo hauled their trunks up onto the train, while Roxanne left them to find some of her seventh-year friends. They made their way down the corridor, searching for an empty compartment.

"Lily! Hugo! In here!"

A girl with wispy brown hair was leaning out of a compartment a few doors up, waving frantically at them. She was almost invisible behind the enormousness of her own teacup-sized eyes, which gave her the appearance of being permanently amazed.

"Evangeline!" Lily heaved her luggage through the sliding door and up onto the rack. "How was your summer?"

"It was good. Mum took me and Archie scuba diving in Portugal. It's something Muggles do on holiday," she added to their bemused expressions.

"Oh. Sounds painful," said Hugo, plopping onto the window seat. Lily sat beside him and pulled the door shut.

"No, it was fun. What about you two?"

"The usual. Quidditch at Granny and Grandad's – which Fred cheats at appallingly, by the way –"

"I can imagine," grinned Evangeline, who had been deeply impressed by his and James' stunt with the Babbling Beverages three years earlier.

"– yeah, and he was on James' team anyway, so he didn't need to. What else? Oh, we got to go to a gig of Al's yesterday. And by 'gig' I mean 'summoning of the darkest demons from the deepest depths of hell'."

"Aw, sounds like I missed out."

Hugo massaged his temples in recollection of the ordeal. "You really didn't."

"Don't listen to him, it was incredible. You'd have loved it," Lily said, truthfully – Evangeline would have split her sides over it. "Anyway Hugo, aren't you supposed to be up at the front with the prefects?"

Hugo sprang up as though his backside had been badly burned. "Oh crap! See you later." He wrenched the door open and was gone.

"Someone's taking his duties seriously," remarked Evangeline. "You'd almost think he wanted to be Head Boy or something."

Lily rolled her eyes – her friend knew perfectly well that Hugo had talked of little else for the last five years. "Come on. It's hard for him, having to follow Rose."

"At least Rose had a sense of _humour _about it." Evangeline offered Lily a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and extracted a handful herself. "So. Anyway. How did you do in your OWLs?"

"'E's in Herbology and Astronomy, 'A' in History of Magic, 'D' in Care of Magical Creatures and 'O's in everything else," rattled off Lily, at a speed born of countless repetitions to friends and relatives.

"Knew you had it in you. Except for Care of Magical Creatures, and we were pretty sure that was a disaster."

Lily nodded. "I think once you're actually on fire your chances of passing are limited. What about you?"

"Um, let's see. 'E' in Potions, 'A' in Defence Against the Dark Arts, 'P' in Transfiguration, 'O' in Divination – which is cool, because when they asked me what I could see in the crystal ball I just said I saw myself getting an 'O'."

"Brilliant," snorted Lily. "Evangeline, you're honestly a genius."

The door of their compartment opened to reveal several of their fellow Gryffindor sixth years.

"Lily! Evangeline!" Monica Patricks swung herself into the seat beside Lily, followed closely by her relentlessly good-natured boyfriend Anthony Schiff and her friend Susie Pepper, a quiet, anxious girl. "How have you been?"

Lily and Evangeline greeted them, Evangeline handing round the Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.

"Have you seen Caius yet?" asked Monica, before spitting out her bean in disgust. "Yuck. Spinach."

"Nope," replied Lily. "Actually, he's probably with the Hufflepuffs. Trying to chat up Rosamond again."

"Poor girl." Anthony shook his head gravely. "Between Caius and Hugo she's got herself a proper pair of stalkers."

"Shut up, Hugo doesn't fancy her!" Lily glanced around at her classmates for confirmation but was met with sniggering. "He doesn't! Does he?"

Anthony grinned. "If by 'fancy her' you mean 'mutter her name in his sleep'..."

"What about The American, is he around?" asked Monica, as Lily pretend-retched out of the window.

"I haven't seen him," said Evangeline. Carter Anderson was the only American in the school, and as such had been dubbed, creatively, 'The American'. "Probably doing something Quidditchy. I bet he's captain this year."

"Probably. Listen, don't tell anyone, but guess what ? Lydia told Judy, who told me – well, Judy told Oonagh and she told me – anyway, I heard he and Scarlett went out in the summer."

Lily gave an exaggerated sigh and tuned out – there was only so much of Monica's gossip you could take, especially when it was so far-fetched. Scarlett Astell wouldn't touch a Gryffindor with a bargepole, much less an American.

The train sped along through soggy September countryside, and before long Carter appeared, wearing an expression of utter fury.

"Are you OK?" asked Monica, breaking off from a blow-by-blow account of her holiday shopping excursions.

Carter slammed the door behind him and threw himself down beside Anthony. "There's no Quidditch this year. No Quidditch. At all."

"Oh." Monica offered him a mildly sympathetic smile and looked set to continue with her story. None of them were on the team, and they clearly did not produce the reaction he'd been hoping for.

"They've cancelled the entire Quidditch cup. All for this stupid lame Triwizard thing." He gazed at them expectantly, evidently willing them to grasp the gravity of the situation.

"But – Carter –" Lily began tentatively "– they do that every time."

"They what?"

"Every Triwizard Tournament, they get rid of Quidditch for a year so they can use the pitch. For the tasks. They did it when we were in first year."

"Oh." Carter's shoulders sagged. He'd moved to Hogwarts from the Salem Witches' Institute in their third year. "That's dumb. I mean, only one person gets to do the Tournament, right?"

"Right. The champion. It was my cousin Dominique last time."

"Sure. But that means, like, twenty-eight other people have to miss out on Quidditch! And you can only be champion if you're of age, so that's me out of the running."

"That's most of us out of the running," pointed out Anthony, "Unless anyone feels like pulling a Barty Crouch Jr."

"Well," Carter sighed, "At least it explains why I didn't get captain. I've been trying to find out who did." He slumped back into his seat with a look of the deepest melacholy.

Evangeline managed to change the subject swiftly by sniffing a chunk of Rainbow Nougat and sneezing an enormous cloud of multicoloured dust. "Sorry. Hang on, I'll fix it. _Scourgify!_"

The dust gave a feeble puff and settled back over everything. Evangeline's skill with household spells was severely limited.

* * *

><p>Several hours later they arrived, considerably less colourful and having changed into their school robes. Stars winked at them from the ceiling as they took their places at the Gryffindor table, waving at Neville and Hagrid, who sat up with the teachers.<p>

"I hope the Sorting's quick this year, I'm starving," said Evangeline, eyeing the empty platters before her hungrily.

"You had about fifty packets of sweets on the train. I think you can probably manage." Lily moved up to let Hugo slide in between her and his friend Caius Bilgeman.

"I don't know if I can. Last year there were two hatstalls and you could hear my stomach grumbling the whole way through." Evangeline gestured at the tiny figures now filing in behind Professor Flitwick. "I say just put them all in Hufflepuff and be done with it."

The Sorting turned out to be reasonably painless, and by the time "Zielinski, Dianthus" had joined his siblings on the Slytherin table Evangeline's stomach had issued only the very daintiest of rumbles. Food appeared and they dug in.

"I still can't decide what subjects to take," mused Evangeline through a mouthful of shepherd's pie. "I sort of like History of Magic, but I don't know if I can stand Binns for another two years. And do you think they'll let me take Potions with an 'E' at OWL?"

Lily shrugged. "Probably. I think I'll take Potions, depends if it clashes with Arithmancy though."

"You've got to take Potions." Evangeline nodded in the direction of Professor Calder, whose flawless profile was on full display as he chatted to Neville. "You'll be the only girl who isn't otherwise."

"I don't see what's so great about Calder," put in Caius, "I mean, sure, he's pretty, but –"

"Lacking your raw sexual magnetism, Caius?" suggested Lily.

Caius didn't have the grace to look even remotely abashed. His pursuit of the Hufflepuff Rosamond Ellis had not for one moment caused him to doubt his own allure, which as far as he was concerned was unrivalled – instead, he chose to blame his lack of success on Rosamond's mental state.

Monica Patricks' gaze had not shifted from the Potions professor: "Mm, 'raw sexual magnetism' just about sums him up, does't it?"

The generally even-tempered Anthony found this too much and elbowed his girlfriend sharply.

"Not that you don't have sexual magnetism, Anthony," added Monica quickly. "But, um, you're caring and intelligent and funny as well."

A placated Anthony reached for the chocolate roulade, which had just materialised in front of him, while Lily spooned profiteroles onto her plate.

After a few minutes the remnants of dessert disappeared, and the general chatter died down as Professor Mottershead stood up to make her customary start-of-year address. She was a stubby, cosy-looking woman, whose candyfloss hair and pom-pommed cardigans belied a dragonlike ferocity: she had been headmistress for around twenty years now and kept the whole school, including the teachers, firmly under her thumb.

"An enormous welcome to our freshly Sorted new students, and welcome back to the old," she trilled in her deceptively endearing voice – after the infamous decoy detonator incident Lily had experienced what it was like to get on her bad side. "I hope you're ready to explode with all that wonderful food. I must say I enjoyed the apple crumble tremendously.

"Well – another year, another set of objects Mr Filch has asked me to prohibit. This year the list includes winged trainers, double-sided Spellotape and, ah, teddy bears, as well as anything from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, as usual – but it's quite extensive so I shan't go through the whole thing. For anybody in dire need of reading material it will be pinned to the door of the staff room, all one-hundred and twenty-eight pages of it.

"Moving on. The Forbidden Forest is out of bounds, as is Professor Calder's office without his permission –" there was an outbreak of tittering from a group of girls at the Ravenclaw table – "and of course no hexing each other to pieces in the corridors, Madam Bones' healing abilities do not stretch to raising the dead.

"Finally: I imagine you are all aware that, for the third time since its revival, Hogwarts will be playing host to the Triwizard Tournament." There was a storm of applause, which died down immediately at the cocking of one of Professor Mottershead's eyebrows. "Yes, very exciting, you're quite right, however: it means that there will be no Quidditch –" a little way down the Gryffindor table Lily saw Carter with his face in his hands – "and that we must all be on our very best behaviour for the delegations from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons.

"The foreign students will be arriving on the thirtieth of October, for the selection of the champions; they will return for each of the three challenges, as well as for the Yule Ball. We don't want to interrupt their education too much! As for the champions, you know by now that the position is only open to those aged seventeen or above on the day of their selection, at the Halloween Feast."

Lily exchanged an excited look with Evangeline. The thirty-first was her birthday. She would be allowed to go for champion!

"That concludes tonight's festivities, so I shall wish you all a very good night. And if anyone happens to see Peeves on their way to bed, please be so kind as to tell him I want my fluffy hippogriff slippers back, I was rather attached to them. Sweet dreams, everybody!"

There was a scraping of benches as the whole school rose, and Lily and Evangeline found themselves borne towards the door in the tide of people. Hugo left them to direct the first years to the dormitory, absentmindedly caressing his prefect badge.

"Lily!" Evangeline shouted over the noise, turning to her in excitement.

"I know!" she yelled back. They made it through the bottleneck of the door and turned right towards the staircase. "Do you think I should do it?"

"Absolutely! I mean, chances are you probably won't get it, seeing as most of the others will be seventh years – but I'll stop talking to you if you don't put your name in, I really will."

"What if I do get it, though? What if the challenges are really scary and I come last in all of them?"

"You wouldn't. Well, if you did it wouldn't matter because you'd be the youngest."

Lily thought about putting her name in the Goblet and waiting to see if it came out again. "What if I didn't get it?" She imagined some muscly seventh year with lightning reflexes striding up to join the other champions, while she looked on. "I'd be a failure."

"So obviously there'd be no point in trying." Evangeline nodded earnestly, then stuck out her tongue. "Come on. I'd kill for the chance, it's just my luck my birthday's in March."

They made their way up several more flights of stairs to the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, where they stopped. "Do you know the password?" asked Lily.

"Nope. We could try guessing it – how about, um, _I will personally strangle you if you don't enter_?"

"How about, _leave me alone_?" They stared each other off for a moment. "Look, I'll enter, of course I'll enter!" Evangeline gave a whoop and performed what might have been intended to be a victory dance. "But it's not till October, so I don't even have to think about it for a month."

"You're going to enter, Lily?" Hugo appeared, trailing a group of first years. "That's amazing! Mum and Dad'll be so impressed, I'll owl them in the morning..."

"Don't you dare, Hugo. I need to be able to tell everyone I didn't enter if I don't get it." Hugo didn't seem persuaded. "I mean it, I'll turn you into a teacup if you do. What's the password, by the way?"

"_Bungfunger_. All right, I won't say anything."

Up in the girls' dormitory, Monica and Susie were already unpacking, shaking out neatly folded clothes and hanging them in their cupboards. Lily found that she couldn't be bothered to do anything similar, and dug out her pyjamas from the mess in her trunk. "Night," she yawned at the others when she'd changed into them, leaving her robes in a heap on the floor.

"Night," returned Evangeline.

She pulled the curtains shut around her bed and was quickly unconscious.


	3. Explosions and Eccles Cakes

**Sorry my updates are so sporadic! I'm trying to come back to the story now that I have less work on, and as I'm rewriting rather than writing from scratch the process shouldn't take too long... but it does seem to be taking a while! Bear with me!**

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><p>Breakfast on their first day back, and the heads of houses were frantically trying to sort out NEWT options. "I'm sorry, Mr Priestley," Lily heard Professor Flitwick squeak to Richard Priestley over at the Ravenclaw table, "I can't let you take twelve subjects, there simply isn't space in the timetable." Richard offered up several well-constructed arguments which were crushed unequivocally. Evangeline offered up a consummate parody of his pained and highly indignant expression.<p>

"I think it's disgusting," sighed Lily, "Twenty-three OWLs, and half of them in subjects the school doesn't even teach." She wouldn't have minded, except that he made a habit of telling anybody who came within five metres of him.

Professor Longbottom moved down the Gryffindor table, approving and disputing students' various options according to whether they'd achieved the required grades. "Transfiguration, yup – Potions is fine, Monica – Susie, are you sure you can handle Charms? – I'm sorry, Hugo, I can't let you do Ancient Runes with a 'P'."

Lily was certain Hugo hadn't wanted to anyway, and was only considering it because Rose had taken it. "OK. Herbology's all right, isn't it? And I'll do Muggle Studies instead, it'll help me when I visit Grandma and Grandpa."

Evangeline cleared Divination, Astronomy and History of Magic with no trouble, and managed to wheedle her way into Potions and Charms despite her liability to blow up whatever she came into contact with. "I'll be extra, extra careful, I promise."

"Lily." Professor Longbottom had reached her.

She read through the list she'd scribbled down a few minutes earlier: "Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts –"

"Of course." Neville grinned. "I should hope so too."

"Arithmancy, Potions and Transfiguration. Is that all OK?"

"That sounds fine." He removed the tip of his quill from his mouth and applied it to a roll of parchment, recording her five subjects. "Great. So –" he flicked his wand to produce another sheet of parchment, this one a timetable with her name at the top. "There you go, now don't be late."

She glanced down at it and read 'Arithmancy' as her first lesson on Monday. "I'll go and get my books."

Between them, Lily and Hugo had had second-hand textbooks for every single subject foisted on them by cousins eager that they take them – "Just in case you change your mind about Astronomy," Louis had said, tipping a pile of books into Hugo's rucksack despite his protestations. He had passed them on to Evangeline.

Lily dug out the books she needed for that morning and stowed them in her bag, before making her way down to her Arithmancy classroom in plenty of time. Being late for Professor Sestas' lessons was never an enjoyable experience.

Waiting outside, Lily saw that the only other Gryffindor taking the subject was Anthony Schiff, who was in conversation with a couple of Hufflepuffs she didn't know well. She took a quick survey of her other classmates. Mostly Ravenclaws, several Slytherins, one or two more Hufflepuffs. None of them were particular friends of hers, and she wondered whether she'd have anyone to sit with.

"In you come!" barked a voice from the door, causing a few of the students to jump. "You know the drill by now, we can't have you hanging around in the corridor all lesson. Quickly!"

Professor Sestas, a good head shorter than most of her students, ushered them into the classroom with an impatient clap of her hands and lined them up along the wall. "Right. I'm going to set you a seating plan, we can't have anybody enjoying my lessons." There were a couple of muffled giggles – with Sestas' acidic sense of humour it was impossible not to enjoy her lessons.

"Davies, over there. Omari, next to her. Stroup, by the door. Poile –" Sestas tossed their bags beside the desks with a few sharp wand movements, leaving their owners to follow them. The seats quickly began to fill. "Potter – at the front beside Douglas, where I can keep an eye on you."

Lily picked up her bag and repaired an ink bottle which had fallen out, siphoning as much as possible back into it. She took her seat beside a Ravenclaw with glasses and straight, dark blonde hair. "Hi. Ruth, isn't it?"

"Yes. Ruth Douglas," replied the girl, in a faint Scottish burr.

"Right." She took out a quill and her textbooks and laid them on the desk. "I'm Lily."

Ruth gave a small smile. "I know who you are."

"Oh, yeah, of course." It was always unnerving when people said that – what they usually meant was that they knew who her family were. Lily knew there had been articles about them sometimes, in the Daily Prophet, and public opinion seemed to cast her firmly as James and Al's sparky yet essentially unremarkable younger sister – but nobody _really_ knew who she was at all, besides recognising her face and her name.

Professor Sestas strode to the front of the class and set the chalk writing rapidly on the blackboard. "Page eight in your textbooks, please." The chalk drew an eight in the corner of the board. "Who can tell me the attributes of the number eight?"

Richard Priestley's hand shot up."Practical, organised, successful."

"Precisely. Which it appears neither Miss Davies nor Miss Omari has been this morning. Douglas, I'm afraid you'll have to share with Potter." Ruth's textbook flew off their desk and landed a few rows behind them. "Revision lesson today, boys and girls, we all know what the holidays do to your brains. We're going to have to get them back in shape if we're to put anything in them this year."

Lily opened her book and began copying out the properties of different types of name numbers, while Sestas took them through it all at breakneck speed. "Total of the first name is useful in brewing potions. If you're performing a hex or a curse you need the full name, middle names and all. Li, what's the total of your name?"

All heads turned to Cong Li, who went practically cross-eyed with concentration. "Um, twenty-one... plus, um... thirty... forty-three for my middle name... plus three, twelve... That's seventy-six."

"Which makes your name number four, and the prime factors two, two and nineteen." Professor Sestas' formidably fast mental arithmetic was legendary among the Hogwarts students. "Good. And this allows us to work out, for example, exactly how many anticlockwise stirs a love potion for Mr Li would require. Next page, please."

Ruth reached for the page of Lily's textbook to turn it over, but as she did so something surprising happened. Her entire right arm disappeared.

Lily gave a yelp.

"Is there something you'd like to share with us, Miss Potter?" Professor Sestas broke off from her lecture and directed a piercing gaze at her pupil. Lily was still gaping at the place where Ruth's arm should have been.

"What just happened?" she asked her, trying to ignore the fact that everyone was now staring at her.

Ruth gave her sleeve a little shake and produced a perfectly intact hand from its folds. "Nothing." Pink spots had appeared on her cheeks and Lily decided not to pursue the subject with the entire class as an audience.

"Oh. Um, OK. I probably imagined it," she said, knowing full well that she had imagined nothing. She was perplexed. How could Ruth be acting so casually when one of her limbs had just vanished?

Lily spent the rest of the lesson puzzling over it. What had caused it? An invisibility cloak or Disillusionment charm? A non-verbal Vanishing spell? Her concentration slipped, and her teacher lost no opportunity capitalising on her weakness. "Potter, I want the prime factors of your date of birth, and how they can be used to optimise the effects of the Jelly-Legs Jinx on you."

"Um, what?"

She left the class in a state of confusion, heading in the direction of her next lesson. Was it rude to ask about it? Probably, seeing as Ruth had denied anything had happened. Could she control her curiosity? Probably not. She'd have to find out some other way – the library? Or, better, her cousin Rose?

"Lily!" She spun round to see Ruth walking towards her, and waited for her to catch up. "Do you take Transfiguration?"

"Yeah. I'm going there now. Look –"

"OK, I'll come with you."

Unsure whether to push it further, Lily kept quiet. They walked in silence for a moment; then Ruth took a deep breath."What happened earlier – it's a – sort of a condition. I've had it since I was a child."

Lily frowned. "What, parts of you just disappear?"

"Something like that. I fell in a cauldron of really powerful Vanishing Solution when I was little."

"Merlin." That explained things. "How did they get you back?"

"My dad managed to conjure me again – well, bits of me, I kept disappearing and reappearing, lost loads of blood – and they got me to St Mungo's, where they stabilised it."

"Not completely, by the looks of it."

"No. It happens quite often actually, it's pretty annoying."

"But it doesn't hurt?"

"Not much. The Healers got the wounds to close over when it happens, so it's just a kind of tingly sensation."

Lily was grateful to Ruth for explaining – she had every right to keep that kind of thing private. "Sorry for embarrassing you," she said, "It was just a bit of a shock."

"That's all right. Quite a lot of people know, anyway. I just don't like them all staring at me like a freak while it happens."

They reached the Transfiguration classroom. They were late, having been dawdling as they chatted, and there was only one desk left. "Looks like we're neighbours again," said Ruth, looking almost apologetic.

"All right." Lily dumped her bag on the desk beside her and smiled.

* * *

><p>She related the whole thing to Hugo and Evangeline at break, to Evangeline's utter fascination. "Bits of her vanish?" She glanced around her eagerly, as though Ruth might be standing right behind them with her head missing. "Where is she, how come we've never talked to her?"<p>

Hugo had enjoyed Care of Magical Creatures, and brought an invitation from Hagrid to have tea with him that evening. "He's got hold of some Graphorn calves though, so I think we should keep a healthy distance from him until someone confiscates them."

"Come on, they can't be that bad. They're just, what, little purple fluffy things, aren't they?"

Hugo shuddered. "Yeah, with foul tempers and a pair of razor-sharp golden horns."

After collecting their textbooks and potions equipment, they set off to double Potions in Professor Calder's classroom on the ground floor. When he'd started at the school, at the same time as their yeargroup, Calder had kicked up a huge fuss about the dungeon classroom and insisted on somewhere with fresh air and daylight. Professor Mottershead had granted him a disused room in a corridor off the entrance hall, which he had covered in diagrams, recipes and dried ingredients hanging from hooks.

The room was already brimming with sixth-year girls when they reached it; a few boys sat in a huddle at the back looking deeply uncomfortable. They spotted Susie Pepper and Monica Patricks among the throng of girls and squeezed three stools in beside them.

Just as Lily had heaved her cauldron onto the desk, their teacher swept in, eliciting gasps of adoration from a nearby gaggle of girls. Evangeline cast them a look of deep disdain. Calder didn't respond – Lily supposed he was used to it – and proceeded to scrawl _'NEWT' Level Potions _on the blackboard.

"Morning, class." He squinted across the room at them, frowning. "There seem to be rather a lot of you."

There was an eruption of muffled giggles, hastily quelled. Calder took out a sheet of parchment and consulted it, then glanced up at his students again. "Are you all sure you're supposed to be here? Judy – Keziah – I can't see you on my list, I'm afraid."

More giggling. A pair of Hufflepuff girls stood up, pink-cheeked, and made their way out of the classroom.

"All right, who here is actually taking Potions?" Calder glared round the class. About two thirds of them raised their hands, Lily, Evangeline and Hugo included. He sighed. "I'm going to have to ask the rest of you to leave, please. Now."

Two whole benches were suddenly vacated as groups of students got up and left. The class reshuffled so that they were spaced out along the desks, instead of squashed up against each other.

"I thought we'd start with something simple," said Calder, opening all their textbooks with a swift wand movement; Evangeline's burst out of her bag, which she'd forgotten to extract it from. "I should hope that if you've made it to NEWT level you can all brew a respectable Forgetfulness Potion."

Lily got out the necessary ingredients and started preparing them, following the instructions carefully and ensuring that her cauldron was at the right temperature. She could feel Hugo leaning over her shoulder to check that he was doing the same as her. Beside him, Monica was resting her chin in her hands, still gazing up at their teacher.

"Monica... are you actually going to do anything?" she asked.

Monica didn't even glance at her. "In a minute," she murmured, eyes still fixed on Calder. "I'm admiring the view."

Lily turned to Evangeline. "What is it about him? Why are they all so obsessed?"

Evangeline shrugged, her cauldron emitting a couple of greenish puffs which didn't appear anywhere in the instructions. "I don't know. I mean," she grinned, "He _is_ good-looking."

Lily stole another look at him. Evangeline made an undeniably valid point: with his broad shoulders, chiselled bone structure and chocolatey curls, Calder was the very image of masculine beauty. And he was clever, too: the youngest professor at Hogwarts in several centuries, only twenty-three when he'd started. But while she liked him very much, Lily failed to see the attraction which was so clear to the other female members of her yeargroup. Maybe she just didn't read _Witch Weekly _often enough.

She started crushing up mistletoe berries while she waited for her potion to brew. Meanwhile, Evangeline's attention had wandered from her cauldron and it was beginning to smell rancid. "Can I see what other ingredients you've got?" she asked, rummaging through Lily's potion kit without waiting for permission. "Ooh, Plimpy eyes. I haven't got any of those. Lacewing flies." She was poking around in the bottle, crushing the dead insects with the tip of her silver knife. "Boomslang skin, how did you get that?"

Lily – who had swiped it from Rose's 'advanced' kit on a dare from Fred – decided that things had gone too far and made a grab for it. Instead of giving in, Evangeline tugged back, and in a single rapid motion the skin slipped out of her grip and, carried forward by the momentum, into the stewing mess of Evangeline's cauldron.

There was a sucking, gurgling sound, and the cauldron spat out its contents in a spectacular explosion of curdled green gunk. Professor Calder stalked over, Vanishing the stuff from his hair and robes.

"Detention. Both of you."

Lily looked from Evangeline to the cauldron to herself, and realised that, with her hands still thrown up in horror at the explosion, she looked every bit as guilty as her friend. "But, sir – I was just –"

"She didn't –" put in Evangeline at the same time.

Calder shook his head. "I don't care. You should both know better by now."

Realising that further protest would be pointless, Lily scowled and noted down the date and time. Detention on her first day of lessons. This had to be some kind of record.

* * *

><p>"It's not," Hugo reassured her on the way to Hagrid's that evening, "Our dads got detention on their first evening of second year, for crashing that car into the Whomping Willow, remember?"<p>

Evangeline nodded encouragingly. "And didn't James and Fred get caught graffiting fairies on the Slytherin Quidditch team's luggage one year? Before the train had even set off?"

Lily reached up to knock on Hagrid's door. A moment later, his beaming face appeared in its place, and the smell of fresh baking greeted them.

"All righ', you three?" They were ushered in and had steaming mugs of tea thrust into their hands. "Good ter see yeh. I was worried it'd be too quiet here now Al and Rose've left, bu' those firs' years've got good pairs of lungs on 'em, I can tell yeh! Sugar?"

He began to stand up painfully, so Lily jumped up and fetched the pot before he could. Old age was finally starting to take its toll on their parents' friend, and, while he was still determinedly chasing illegal creatures across the Hogwarts grounds, he was finding it harder and harder to do so.

"So where are those Graphorns we've been hearing about, Hagrid?" asked Lily warily, conducting a quick scan of the room. There were none in evidence.

"Oh, I'm keepin' 'em up behind the castle. 'Parently they prefer high altitudes."

Lily, Hugo and Evangeline breathed a collective sigh of relief. "Maybe we'll go and visit them later," said Evangeline.

She seemed to convince Hagrid. "They appreciate the comp'ny, yeh know," he told them.

Hagrid produced a tray of charred Eccles cakes, which they pretended to eat whilst giving him the latest news of their family members.

"Molly's got a job on the House-Elf Allocation Committee," Hugo told him, "Which sounds really, really boring."

"And Teddy got promoted, so he's a Senior Auror now."

Hagrid nodded approvingly. "Always known he'd go far, tha' one."

Evangeline, whose Muggle family, whilst unconventional, was nowhere near as large or as crazy as the Weasley clan, piped up that her parents had just bought a new lawnmower. "Which may not seem _that_ exciting, but it _is _really shiny."

"A new wha', now?" asked Hagrid, who, along with most of the world, had trouble understanding Evangeline's sense of humour.

Lily decided to switch subjects quickly: "Anyway, what have you been up to, Hagrid?"

"Me? Oh, yeh know, the usual. Grawpy's bin helpin' me out with some of the heavier work in the grounds – the legs aren' wha' they used ter be, ter tell yeh the truth."

"You know we're around if you need anything, Hagrid," said Hugo, "And our parents would love to drop in and give you a hand."

Hagrid chuckled gruffly. "No! Don' yeh go worryin' yerselves over me, I'm alrigh'."

Lily took the plates over to the sink, surreptitiously disposing of the uneaten Eccles cakes out of the window.

"Hm, wha' else've I bin doin'? Oh – tha's righ', nearly bought a Chimaera the other day."

The three of them reacted with a simultaneous "WHAT?"

"Hagrid, those are practically the most dangerous things on the planet!" exclaimed Hugo, while Lily protested that they were illegal for a reason and Evangeline asked, "Where would you keep a Chimaera anyway?"

"Calm down, I didn' actually buy the thing," said Hagrid, apparently taken aback by their response. "I mean, of course I wanted ter, who wouldn'?"

All three raised their hands immediately, and Hagrid sighed.

"It's jus' all these excitin' animals I've bin hearin' abou' recently, it's temptin', yeh know?"

Hugo and Evangeling shook their heads, but Lily, still focusing on the first part of his statement, asked "What do you mean, 'all these exciting animals'? What other ones are there?"

"Oh, jus' ones yeh hear talk abou' – on the grapevine, as it were. Dragons, trolls, sometimes an Erumpent or two... there are a lot around these days, tha's all."

"A boom in the monster market. I wonder why?" Lily mused. "Does Dad know about this?"

"'Course," replied Hagrid cheerfully, "Reckon he knows just abou' everything tha' goes on."

Lily dropped it, suitably reassured. Of course her dad knew. Of course he'd be sorting it out as they spoke.


	4. Hogsmeade and the Hospital Wing

**Here's chapter four! I'm really working to get most of what I've written so far up to publishable standard, so stay tuned for more updates. Reviews and favourite massively appreciated!**

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><p>Detention with Professor Calder the following evening turned out to be surprisingly painless, mostly because his anger from the previous day had evaporated completely, and he was back to his usual sunny-tempered self, entertaining them with Potions-related anecdotes.<p>

"Did you know that Laverne de Montmorency only started making Love Potions because she was so foul-looking? Imagine – if it weren't for her disfiguring warts we'd never have discovered Amortentia."

The next few weeks passed by quickly, as they settled into their new classes and struggled against growing heaps of work. Professor Sestas took a decisive lead in the homework stakes, setting around a full essay per lesson; whereas Professor Calder, whose customary good mood had become positively radiant for no reason that his students could ascertain, set almost nothing, and pronounced everything they produced in lessons perfect.

"Is he OK?" muttered Lily to Evangeline, as their teacher ambled around the classroom, whistling merrily. "You don't think somebody's slipped him a Euphoria Elixir, do you?"

"I'd slip him more than that," sighed Monica, who had done nothing all lesson but stare at Calder. "I hear Weasleys' do a mean Kissing Concoction."

In due course, the dates for the first Hogsmeade weekend were put on the Gryffindor noticeboard. Evangeline was keen to go to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, so that Saturday afternoon found her and Lily making their way through the crowded high street, trying to avoid having their toes stepped on. Hugo was at the Shrieking Shack with Caius Bilgeman and some others, making a desperate, and probably ill-fated, attempt at being cool.

Lily pushed open the heavy glass door and stepped into a violently colourful interior. Products were spilling from shelves, people examining them and chattering excitedly. She saw Evangeline slip off into the crowd. "Hang on," she called, "I don't need anything, I'll come with you."

She followed Evangeline upstairs to the clothing section, passing Vanishing School Robes ('torment your enemies with the _ultimate _embarrassment'), Bounding Boots ('reach the stars in a single leap') and Finger-Binding Gloves ('for people who can't keep their hands to themselves'). They stopped by the counter, Evangeline looking slightly disgruntled. Lily was about to ask her what was wrong, but she spotted Fred Weasley making his way towards her in magenta staff robes and went to greet him.

Fred had worked at his father's shop for two years now, not including the many summers he'd spent helping out there in his job had been intended as a temporary one after he left school – he knew the place so well he could have run it singlehandedly by the age of twelve – but somehow he'd never got around to pursuing any other career.

"Lily!" he said, pulling her into an enormous hug. He then did the same to Evangeline, who emerged pink-cheeked. "How may I help you ladies?"

"Nothing for me, thanks, I know not to buy from dodgy characters like you," said Lily. "Evangeline wanted a few things though, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah," said Evangeline, pushing several stray strands of hair behind her ear. "I just wanted some Dungbombs. And a –" she glanced around her – "A self-inking quill. I always think," she continued as Fred led them to the stationery section, "That that's one thing wizards have got really, really wrong. I mean, we can do magic! So why should we waste time dipping quills in ink when Muggles have a better solution? What's wrong with a nice biro?"

Both Fred and Lily were staring at her, Fred with something like amusement and Lily utterly nonplussed. She fell suddenly completely silent.

"Was that all?" asked Fred. It was. Evangeline paid quickly and they went out, the air several degrees colder with the onset of evening.

They walked back up the high street, Evangeline still unusually quiet. "Where next?" asked Lily. Evangeline didn't suggest anything, so Lily steered her into the Three Broomsticks, where they found Hugo and the others back from their excursion to the Shrieking Shack.

"Guys, I've got it." Carter Anderson rounded on them as soon as they approached the table. His eyes were gleaming with the kind of thrill that only Quidditch produced in him.

"Got what?" asked Lily. She and Evangeline found chairs and pulled them up; Carter looked about to burst with the excitement of whatever he was trying to tell them.

"Quodpot! Guys, Quodpot!"

The others around the table – Hugo, Caius and Oonagh Nolan, who shared their dormitory – rolled their eyes, this bombshell clearly having already been explained to them. "For the last time, Carter," said Oonagh, "Nobody outside the States knows what Quodpot is."

"Right. Well, Quodpot is the American equivalent of Quidditch. And I thought, since we're not allowed to play Quidditch this year, why not try Quodpot? We could make a pitch in the grounds, it wouldn't have to be perfect, and there are only two goalposts, so it would be easier to set up."

"Sounds – great, Carter," said Lily, not wanting to crush the puppylike enthusiasm he was displaying.

Carter nodded manically at the encouragement. "And it's more fun, anyway, because there's an exploding ball and you get cooler outfits."

"Who are you going to get to play?"

"Oonagh says she will, don't you?"

Oonagh frowned. "I said I might. But there's no Seeker, so I don't know what position I'd play."

"Come on, I've seen you play Chaser! You're not bad at all." He turned to Lily and Evangeline. "So, how about it?"

"Us?" snorted Evangeline.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't mix well with anything explosive. And also I can't catch."

"OK, fair enough. Lily? You're a pretty good flier."

"Um..." she searched her classmates' faces for help but received nothing. Unsure whether she was letting herself in for a total disaster, she said, "I suppose so. You'll have to teach everyone the rules, though."

Carter's face lit up. "Yes! That's three people for the Gryffindor team. We only need eight more!"

Caius sighed, a look of resignation on his face: "If Oonagh and Lily are doing it then maybe I will."

This prompted Hugo to sign up as well, to Carter's visible horror – Hugo's infrequent excursions on broomsticks usually ended in tears; sometimes his, often his teammates'. But The American was in far too manic a state to let this subdue him for long.

"All right! That's five, and remember there are still plenty left from last year's Quidditch team. I should get the other houses involved." He rose and made towards a table of Hufflepuffs nearby, calling over his shoulder, "And talk to Professor Calder about Quodpot solution!"

"_Quodpot solution_," groaned Oonagh, "Honestly, it sounds like he's making most of this stuff up."

Caius leaned in to say quietly, "Don't worry, guys. He'll have forgotten all about it in a couple of weeks."

* * *

><p>Carter was in deadly earnest, and the next couple of weeks saw him achieve everything he'd threatened to. He recruited a full team of eleven from each house; cleared a pitch, with Grawp and Hagrid's help, on the scrubby lawn beside the Forest; set up some old cauldrons on posts at either end of it; and talked Professor Calder into producing several vats of Quodpot solution.<p>

This last proved surprisingly easy, as Calder's good mood seemed to stretch on and on as September faded into October. Lily would slump into her seat beside Hugo and Evangeline after an hour of Professor Quirke's finickity corrections in Transfiguration, or Professor Robins' randomly thrown hexes in Defence Against the Dark Arts – and find her late homework dismissed with a breezy wave of her teacher's hand. "I know you're all right with basic poison theory, hand it in when you like."

It wasn't that he didn't teach them; just that he seemed distracted, and frankly that was a welcome relief from the slave-driving of the other teachers. Anyway, it didn't stop him furnishing Carter with enough solution for a whole season of Quodpot, as well as promising to referee the matches.

"The first one should be soon," Carter told them, "We have to give the teams time to train, though."

Training was something he himself took very seriously – but although after a while it became difficult not to let some of his enthusiasm rub off on them, the Gryffindors still lacked commitment. Caius and Hugo much preferred to spend their time prowling the castle for glimpses of Rosamond Ellis; Hugo, even when frog-marched to practice by Carter and Lily, often refused to mount his broom. "You know I don't like heights."

All in all, by the time of the first match the Gryffindor team barely knew the rules, and Hufflepuff, whom they were playing, were no better. Lily, and most of the others, found it best to view it as a diverting but probably doomed experiment; however, Carter's whole existence now seemed to hinge on it. "I thought I wouldn't be able to go a whole year without Quidditch," he had said to Lily in Defence against the Dark Arts, a few days earlier, "But you know what? I'm doing fine."

Lily had slipped a Stunning Spell under his clumsy defences, revived him, and bent over to help him up. "Maybe you should extend that fineness to your schoolwork."

Now, as students began to straggle around the edges of their makeshift pitch looking chilly, and members of the Hufflepuff team stood chatting without their broomsticks, Carter pulled them in for a team talk. "OK. Now no pressure, people, but we really can't afford to lose this match."

Oonagh rolled her eyes: "What are you talking about? It's only the first match."

"And you invented the league," added Lily, "You can rig it as much as you like."

Carter scowled and muttered a few generic words of advice – "Stay focused. Keep your head in the game. Be prepared for anything." – before stepping out to shake hands with Beth Flecker, who had agreed to be Hufflepuff's captain.

At Professor Calder's signal, everybody mounted their broomsticks. Lily shot up for an aerial view of the game, as their brief tactical discussions had concluded she would. Beyond that, she wasn't really sure what to do: probably just stay out of trouble and let Carter win.

Below her, red and yellow capes were zigzagging across the pitch, with the occassional collision followed by shouts of "Sorry! You OK?"

The whistle went several times as Carter scored the first three goals, to little response amid the general mayhem. Professor Calder kept signalling that a foul had been committed, before being reminded of the rules and having to retract the penalty. It seemed the only person who actually knew them was Carter – and he was completely dominating the game. Gradually more and more players bobbed up to Lily's level, perplexed as to what was going on.

Lily hovered beside Hugo, watching the game develop into a pattern: Carter scored. The Hufflepuffs took the ball and passed it a couple of times, before Carter intercepted it. Carter passed it to Oonagh. Oonagh passed back to Carter, who scored. Every now and then the ball exploded, and there were squeals from the spectators and a frantic sounding of the whistle.

Hugo was clutching the handle of his broomstick so hard his knuckles had turned white. "All right?" asked Lily.

He gave a queasy nod. "I just don't like being this high up."

"We could fly down underneath all the action, would that be better?"

Hugo produced a small moan of assent, so she steered her broom downwards, weaving past the few players who were still actually engaged in the game. As she descended, a fresh bout of yelling broke out around her – she tried to dodge out of the commotion but before she could make it back to Hugo she heard her name – "LILY!"

The Quod came careering towards her out of nowhere, and she felt it hit her hands before she'd even thought about catching it. In shock, she tried to get her bearings, scanning around for her teammates. Oonagh was pinned between a couple of Hufflepuffs, who she thought were their Quidditch team's beaters. Carter was streaking up the pitch towards the goal – it looked like he was the one who'd passed to her. "Lily!" he called again, holding up his hands.

She glanced down at the ball, then at the remaining Hufflepuffs, who were advancing towards her, then at Carter, arms outstretched; then at the ball, which was smoking.

She panicked. She couldn't pass it to Carter if it was about to blow up. She couldn't keep holding it. She couldn't let the Hufflepuffs get it in case they scored... Without really thinking, she lobbed it as far as she could in the direction she happened to be facing.

There was an explosion near the huddle of spectators, and a high-pitched yelp. Lily's stomach contracted and she rushed back onto the ground, where people were beginning to flock around a prone Susie Pepper.

"Susie!" she gasped, pushing through the crowd and kneeling down beside her classmate. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to... Are you OK? Can you hear me?"

Susie grunted weakly. She and the grass around her were covered in bits of leather and stuffing, from the exploded Quod.

"Let's get her to the Hospital Wing," Calder was saying.

Lily put Susie's arm around her shoulder and helped her up. Calder supported her from the other side, and together they helped her stagger back to the castle, Lily keeping up a stream of panicked apologies.

Once they reached the Hospital Wing, Madam Bones whisked Susie away from them and poured a bottle of sweet-smelling purple liquid down her, which brought some colour back into her cheeks. As she did so, she extracted a full explanation from Lily and Professor Calder, which she listened to with an increasingly horrified expression. "Exploding Quaffles? You're insane, the lot of you. I thought this year would be calmer without Quidditch – the worst I've had to deal with so far is a chesty cough and some funny-coloured warts. But it seems you're all intent on self-destruction."

"The Quod isn't supposed to be dangerous," protested Lily, feeling that Carter wouldn't thank her for getting the game banned after one match. "Professional players get exploded at all the time and they're fine."

"And Miss Pepper is not a professional player! She's a delicate girl with a nervous disposition who shouldn't have been anywhere near the thing."

Susie's voice emerged faintly from amid a mass of pillows. "I'm all right..."

Madam Bones thrust a spoonful of something into her mouth, silencing her.

"She's not actually missing any body parts," said Lily, hoping to assuage the guilt welling in her stomach. It didn't work: her classmate's bruised face and trembling hands were proof enough of the damage she'd inflicted.

Madam Bones shot her a murderous look. "I think you'd better go now, Miss Potter. You've done quite enough."

Reluctant to leave Susie, but unwilling to argue any further, Lily went back to the common room and waited for the others to return. It didn't take long.

"We didn't think there was much point continuing," Oonagh explained softly, as Monica and Anthony tried to placate a surly-looking Carter. "We were up seventy-two to three, and anyway we'd lost the referee."

"So are there going to be any more matches?" asked Lily – a little too loudly.

"Of course there are!" snapped Carter from across the room. "I've been planning this for weeks, and if you think I'm going to let your idiotic move ruin this for everyone else –"

"Hang on, I barely even knew the rules! Don't go blaming it all on me."

"You lobbed an explosive at Susie, who am I supposed to blame?"

Hugo was at her elbow, muttering, "Lily..."

"We were supposed to be a team, Carter, and if you hadn't been so busy showing off –"

Carter's face darkened into an expression of pure rage. "You know what? You're off the team."

"Oh, I'm _off the team_?" She snorted. "That's fine. I'm not interested in your stupid game anyway."

She stalked up to the dormitory, changed out of her muddy robes, and went to sleep.


	5. Fangs and Feasting

**A hearty hello to anyone still reading this! I know my updates are sporadic (to put it mildly), but I promise that I do actually have up to chapter 16 written in some form or other, so hopefully I'll be able to share a few more in the near future... Anyway, this one should convince you that there is some kind of storyline going on, and if you like it, please leave a review! They make me happy :)**

* * *

><p>"This is brilliant." Lily was sitting cross-legged on her bed. The covers were strewn with wrapping paper and an assortment of items, from a large cardboard box bearing the slogan "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes: have your friends in stitches", to what looked like an oddly-shaped golden spinning top, to a rather ugly diamante necklace which was in danger of slipping off the end. She was examining a silver watch with a large face and at least ten hands, each pointing to a different set of symbols round the edge. "Mum and Dad have got me a watch. Look, it's got little dragons round the strap! And Dad's got me a sneakoscope –"<p>

"A sneakoscope?" Evangeline picked it up and turned it over in her hand. "What do you need one of them for?"

"I don't. Dad's just paranoid. Knitted jumper and an iPod from Granny and Grandad, no prizes for guessing who chose which. Awful necklace from the house elf. A load of Sleekeazy's hair products from Vic and Teddy – I suppose Vic gets a discount now she's got her face on all the adverts. The rest of Bill's lot have got me enough chocolate frogs to last a lifetime – here, have one." She tossed one over. It croaked loudly.

"Thanks," said Evangeline. Then – "Oh, it's your dad on the card!"

"Keep it, I've got about a million of him." Lily continued sifting through presents."_"Notable Achievements by Former Ministers of Magic" _from Percy, I think I might accidentally misplace that... The Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes stuff is from George and Ron... Charlie's too busy to get me a present, instead he's sent me – whoa! Ten galleons! My godmother's sent me dried doxy droppings. She say's they're "a highly magical secretion of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, with many interesting properties", but they're poisonous, so if I don't bin them I expect I'll end up with some interesting properties of my own." She stopped to unwrap a smaller parcel with tiny broomsticks zooming around on the paper.

"Who's that one from?"

"My brothers." Her fingers began to tremble as she tore at the Spellotape. "If this is what I think it is..." The corner of a shiny metal box was poking out of the paper.

"What?"

"Yes! It is!" She hugged the parcel to her, ecstatic. "Al, I love you and I promise never to tease you about your haircut again."

The box was about the size of a pack of cards, sleek and silver, with the letter _H _engraved in a squarish typeface on the lid. Lily opened it and a ball of light shot out, morphing into a yellow square which read, "State your name". She thought, _Lily Potter_ and the words appeared in front of her.

"What is it?"

"It's a Hokumputer. The new telekintetic model! It's hands-free, and you can access the Wizarding Web from anywhere."

"Cool! Let's see."

Lily handed the Hokumputer to her and had just begun poring over the instruction manual when an irritable voice called up from the common room, "Lily! Evangeline!"

"What?" she yelled back, standing up and walking to the door in her pyjamas to see Hugo at the bottom of the stairs, sporting a magnificent set of fangs and a curiously pallid complexion. "Looking good," she grinned.

"Thanks," he said, leering to show off the fangs to their best advantage. "Happy Halloween. And happy birthday. Now hurry up and get dressed, or you'll be too late to put your name in."

"Where's your costume?" asked Evangeline, who was already squeezing her arms into something large and furry.

Lily rummaged through her trunk until she pulled out a long white dress splattered with bloodstains, which she tugged over her head. She waved her wand in a spiralling motion around her body, then held her hands out in front of her and examined them: the rest of the room was faintly visible through her palms.

Evangeline gave her an approving nod. "Terrifying."

A glance in the mirror seemed to confirm this. She wasn't as transparent as a real ghost, but she didn't look quite solid any more, either. "OK, let's go and gawp at the foreigners."

The delegations from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had arrived the previous evening, to raucous excitement across the school. Professor Tortarov and Madame Maigre had each brought around twenty students with them, all of whom looked intimidating to the point that Lily wasn't sure she wanted to enter the Tournament after all.

"Check out the competition, you mean." Evangeline gave her a long, penetrating look. "And just so we're clear, you're not chickening out now. No way."

Wondering whether Evangeline actually had a much better grasp of Divination than she let on, Lily made for the door. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Oh, Lily! Happy birthday!"

She turned to see Susie emerging from the bathroom, a set of sparkly devil horns perched demurely on her hair. "Thanks! Are you coming down for breakfast?"

"In a minute." Susie bent over and picked something up from the floor. "What's this?" she asked, holding aloft the diamante necklace, which had slipped from Lily's bed.

"Birthday present from my house elf, Squinkle. She doesn't have a huge amount of taste." Susie was gazing at it with clear admiration, so Lily added, "Have it if you want. I won't wear it."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Think of it as an apology for the Quodpot incident." Lily still felt intensely guilty about this, Susie having been in the hospital wing for several days following it.

"Thanks!"

As Susie clipped the hideous object around her throat, Lily found herself dragged down the stairs into the common room, where she was quickly flanked by Hugo and frogmarched through the portrait hole. "You guys really don't think I'm going through with this, do you?"

"We're just making sure."

Lily took a deep breath and tried to look indignant. "Well, I am." All she had to do was drop her name in a cup and hope for the best – anyone could do that.

"You are _so_ lucky," said Evangeline, blowing a few strands of wispy hair off her forehead. "I'm only a couple of months too young, I would _kill_ for the chance to enter the Triwizard Tournament."

"Yeah." A dreamy expression appeared on Hugo's face. "A thousand galleons prize money..."

"And eternal glory," added Evangeline.

"Oh, come on. Neither of you would stand a chance! Evangeline, you'd be making friends with all the monsters, and Hugo would keep apologising for trying to kill them."

Hugo scowled. "Hey, if you put a dragon in front of me I'd liquidise it, seriously."

"That's not what happened when we visited Charlie in Romania. The only liquidisation I remember was in your trousers."

"I was four! Anyway, if you want to get chosen you'd better put your name in quickly."

Lily stepped inside the Great Hall. As well as the usual four house tables, the foreign students were seated at two smaller tables squeezed in at the back. The goblet sat on a podium at the very front of the room, electric blue flames cracking around the rim and shooting up from within. "Everybody's watching," she whispered.

"You should have got up earlier this morning to put your name in. Go on."

"Actually, I think... I think I might wait till after breakfast. See if the hall empties a bit."

Evangeline rolled her eyes, then shrugged. "Suit yourself."

They sat down at the Gryffindor table with some of their classmates, all dressed in appropriately spooky costumes and unimpressed by her cowardice. "Come on, Lily," said Carter, who seemed to have mostly forgiven her for ruining the Quodpot, "We all want your name in there. I mean, who else are we going to support? Yaxley?"

"Yaxley's entering?" she groaned, feeling a fresh wave of nausea hit her. The burly Slytherin was tearing apart sausages at his table with unnecessary brutality.

"Don't worry. Lavinia told me that Thaddeus told her he sleeps with a teddy bear," said Monica.

Anthony shook his head solemnly. "That poor teddy bear."

Lily picked up a piece of toast and started chewing it, hoping that this would prevent any further attempts at conversation. As she ate, she began experimenting with her new Hokumputer.

"What else does it do?" asked Evangeline, leaning over her shoulder.

Lily thought, _Wizarding Web_, and a tiny, shimmering corridor appeared in front of her. The doors along the sides stretched off into the distance, each reading a word or phrase: _wmail; news; Spellpedia_. In the centre of the corridor was a yellow square with the word _search_ at the top.

"Can you get Muggle internet on it too?" asked Evangeline. "Because I'm sick of not being able to access it from school."

"Al says they're connected," said Lily, trying out a few doors. "So you can get Muggle internet without the, um, eckeltrics."

"Great! Well, I know Hugo's mum would disagree, but it's a lot better than spending aeons searching through the library."

Hugo looked up from his _Daily Prophet_. "There's been a massive upheaval at Azkaban. Listen: "_former Death Eaters Rodolphus Lestrange, Galton Travers and Amycus –"_

"I know, it's here." Lily pointed to the Hokumputer, where a heading read '_Daily Prophet Onweb_'.

"Oh."

"But it's all OK, none of them actually escaped and they're all back in their cells."

"Still," said Evangeline, "It makes you think, what were they after?"

Hugo pulled a face at her. "Their _freedom,_ maybe? If you'd been shut up for the rest of your life you'd be trying to get out too."

"Fair enough." Evangeline screwed the lid on the marmalade and fixed Lily with an accusatory stare. "Now. Go on."

"I don't think I –"

"Go!" said Hugo, and the others all folded their arms at her, waiting for her to get up.

"Fine." She stood, and walked toward the goblet. They were right, really. If she didn't even put her name in she'd regret it forever.

She approached it tentatively. A blue, dome-shaped enchantment glittered above it, faintly visible: an age-detecting charm. Not a problem – as of this morning, she was of age.

The number of people in the hall had not diminished; if anything, it had increased. Students were looking up at her with interest. She surveyed them slightly queasily.

"Hurry up," called Evangeline, "Or Hugo and I will turn seventeen before you get there."

"You wish," replied Lily. She stepped inside the enchantment and felt a pleasant shiver run down her spine. This was it. She held out the piece of parchment, "_Lily Potter – Hogwarts" _inked on it in her own spiky writing. Taking a deep breath and positioning it directly above the Goblet, she let go.

"You did it!" shrieked Evangeline. A crowd of people had gathered to watch and Evangeline threw her arms around her friend, shouting, "She did it! She put her name in!"

Lily was smiling. That was the hard bit done – now all she had to do was wait, and not for long, either. Her friends had surrounded her and were clapping her on the back, and she suddenly had the feeling that this was what it would be like, to be champion. Gaining the support of her classmates – and on her own merit, not her family's.

She set off to Potions in a much sounder frame of mind, which gradually wore away as she realised quite how many people knew she'd put her name in.

"Good luck, Lily!"  
>"I'm sure it'll pick you."<br>"Runs in the family, doesn't it?"

Well-meant as all these comments were, she did start to see that if she wasn't picked, she'd never live it down. People like Ruth, who told her level-headedly in Transfiguration that "there are some pretty amazing seventh-years, it's nothing to be ashamed of if you don't get it," wouldn't give her a hard time about it – but she'd never hear the end of it from her brothers. By the time of the Halloween feast, the anxiety had returned in force.

* * *

><p>"I don't understand," said Evangeline, poking what looked like half a pig with her fork, "Why they even bother with the Bulgarian food. Look, even the Bulgarians aren't eating it." She waved her fork behind her to where a heavy-browed Durmstrang student was tucking into a dish of roast potatoes with obvious relish.<p>

Lily merely grunted and downed several gulps of pumpkin juice. She knew she ought to stop drinking, but she was so nervous she didn't feel like eating, and the juice seemed to make the butterflies settle. Hugo caught her eye from a little way down the table, where he was sitting beside Caius Bilgeman.

"Lily? Are you OK?" Evangeline's glance seemed slightly concerned.

"Yeah. Fine." She turned her gaze to the teachers' table. Professor Mottershead sat in the centre, her fluffy hair flattened under a pumpkin-shaped beret. To her right was Hippolyta Plum, Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, a stocky woman who had bewitched her head to sit under her arm and was grinning widely from beside her elbow, though she seemed to be having trouble manouevring her cutlery with one hand. On Professor Mottershead's left was the Minister for Magic himself, Waldemar Waffling. He was a thin man who sported a moustache twice as wide as his face, though the only hair on his head was a few yellowish strands hanging from the sides. He had a small spider hanging from the breast pocket of his robes, but had allowed the festivities no further licence with his appearance.

On a lower chair beside the Minister was somebody with such an extravagant snake headress that it practically obscured their face. A pair of pale eyes were drifting around from within the snake's jaws, and for a moment Lily felt them light on her. She looked away quickly, wondering who they belonged to.

"Lily, look, Mottershead's making a speech."

Professor Mottershead had stood up and was clearly waiting for silence. Excited chatter filled the room, and she tapped the side of her goblet sharply with her spoon so that the sound rang out, echoing. The noise died down immediately. "A very happy Halloween to all of you, Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students, and I can see you're all very rightly dying to find out which of you the Goblet of Fire has chosen.

"I must first stress to you all that, whilst the Goblet must by its very nature choose only one student from each school, the student it chooses is by no means the _best_ student. He or she is the student whom it believes will be able to best cope with the challenges that lie ahead of them – and who will be able to gain the most through the experience."

Lily's heart was rising so high in her throat she felt she might cough it up. She watched the flames dancing inside the goblet, barely listening.

"Hogwarts is proud to be hosting the tournament for the third time since its revival, and all of us here hope that it will prove educational not only to the champions, but to those who offer them their support and guidance along the way. After all, that is the entire purpose of the event: international, magical co-operation!"

Applause broke out. Lily could almost feel the tension crackling throughout the room as hundreds of pairs of eyes fixed on the wooden cup.

Then with a _whoosh_ the flames soared upwards and became bright, blazing crimson. A small scrap of parchment shot out; Mottershead caught it and the flames died down again. "The Durmstrang champion," she said, her voice sounding clearly through the room, nobody daring even to breathe, "Is Boris Vulchanov."

Clapping. Disgruntled-looking Durmstrang students patting the heavy-browed boy on the back as he stood up from their table and walked towards the door he was directed to, at the front.

The goblet flared crimson again. "The second champion," called Professor Mottershead, "Is Beauregard Belvidere." An exceptionally handsome boy in an extravagant feathered hat came up from the Beauxbatons table, flicking treacle-coloured hair from his eyes as he walked. Only one champion left.

This could be her. It could also not be her. Lily made herself concentrate on the latter possibility, creating a rhythm in her head: _it isn't me, it won't pick me, it doesn't matter if it's not me._ The flames turned crimson and she clenched her jaw, thinking _it isn't me, it won't be me, I don't mind the tiniest bit if it isn't me._

Professor Mottershead held the paper between her thumb and forefinger, peering at it as though it was difficult to read. _That could be me, _piped up a tiny, rebellious part of her, _my handwriting is a mess. _She screwed her eyes shut, but had to open them again.

"And the final champion, who will represent Hogwarts," said Professor Mottershead, and for a fleeting moment Lily thought she glimpsed something like amusement on her face, "Is Lily Potter."

A roar of applause broke out and she felt her stomach contract in shock. It took Evangeline's elbow in the ribs for her to remember that she was supposed to stand up and walk. Down the Gryffindor table she could see Hugo's lips forming the words, "_My cousin! She's my cousin!" _and felt a surge of such giddy excitement that she paused momentarily, afraid of falling over. In her mind she traced the route she had to take and began walking along it, placing one foot in front of the next, thinking, _it's me, the Hogwarts champion is me, it's me._

* * *

><p>Vulchanov and Belvidere both looked up as she entered the antechamber, the applause still ringing in her ears. They were seated on armchairs by a fire and looked faintly shell-shocked. She supposed she must do too.<p>

"I'm – er, _je m'appelle _Lily Potter," she said, smiling awkwardly. There were no more chairs so she remained standing. Her mother had made her aunt Fleur teach them French, but her mastery of the language was negligible. As for Bulgarian – well, she hoped the Durmstrang students spoke very good English.

"Beauregard Belvidere. But you call me Beau, _oui?_" Belvidere stood up and kissed her once on each cheek, which threw her for a second so that she didn't know how to respond. Close to, he was perhaps even more handsome, if that were possible. His eyes were a deep turquoise-blue and his nose skated up at the end above a pair of full pink lips.

"Oh, er – _oui._"

Vulchanov gave an upwards jerk of his chin, which she took as a greeting.

Behind her, she became aware of somebody entering the room, and she turned to see a young man with bleach-blonde hair pulling off an enormous snake headress. She recognised him with a start: so this was who those pale eyes belonged to.

"Professor Mottershead's just giving a speech. They'll be in in a minute." He ran his eyes over the three of them and nodded at her. "Congratulations, Lily."

"Thanks. Scorpius." She gave him an awkward smile, searching for conversation. She'd never, to her recollection, spoken two words together to her brother's friend. "Um. Nice headdress."

He groaned and put a hand to his forehead. "Oh, don't! It was my mum's idea."

She laughed. "You definitely stand out in a crowd."

"Do I? Oh dear." He gestured to her outfit: "I like the bloodstained bride look though. That's a real gem of a translucency charm."

"Ha, thanks."

She ran out of words and found herself staring, trying to remember what she knew about him. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy. His father was Draco Malfoy, whom her parents tended to make long-winded jokes at the expense of, and he was a Slytherin, which could only count against him. Yet Al said he was all right really – shy, which made him come off as haughty, but well-mannered and extremely clever.

"So – Hogwarts champion. Wow."

She thought she caught a trace of envy in his voice so replied, "It's not fair that it's only every five years. They should give everyone a chance, I know James wishes he'd had one."

He smiled. "I wouldn't have entered anyway. Just have made an idiot of myself."

"Mm. Well – there's that." She gave a loud, nervous laugh. "Like the entire wizarding world needs proof that I'm an idiot, you'd think they could just take a look at me –"

He didn't contradict her, just laughed along quietly.

"So you're working for the Ministry now?" He must be pretty high up to be accompanying the Minister to events like this, especially for someone just out of school. She wondered whether it was his brains or his father's connections that had got him so far.

"Merlin help me, yes. It's what my dad wants me to do. I think he likes the idea of me in a position of power."

"I see."

"It's infuriating. You want to get anywhere, you have to suck up harder than a – a blood-sucking bugbear. But since I don't know what I _do _want to do, I can't really turn it down."

"Do you honestly have no idea?" asked Lily.

"Actually," he said, and his whisper was almost conspiratorial, "I'm pretty sure there's a novel in me somewhere." A sudden smile. "It's well hidden, though."

Boris Vulchanov stood up abruptly and addressed Scorpius. "Vell? Are they coming? Ve haff been vaiting and vaiting and still they do not come." He was scowling at them both as though accusing them of conspiring against him.

Scorpius assumed an air of solicitude and opened the door to check, then closed it again and turned to Vulchanov. "The students have just been dismissed. The organisers are coming to give you your briefing right now."


	6. Quills and Questioning

**I'm keeping my promise and updating more regularly! Hope you like this chapter - reviews, favourites and general good vibes are always appreciated :)**

**Also, I've realised I haven't put a single disclaimer in anywhere. In case anyone's at all confused, I did not write Harry Potter. JK Rowling did. Therefore all the canon characters, place names etc belong to her. Praise be to JK Rowling!**

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><p>Celebrations were already in full swing when Lily got to the Gryffindor common room.<p>

"Third Gryffindor champion in five tournaments!"

"Knew you had it in you, Lily, I swear I did."

"Just do us a favour and win, all right?"

Somebody had made a trip down to the kitchens and it seemed to Lily that there was enough food for several weeks stacked on various coffee tables about the room. She was suddenly ravenously hungry, remembering that she hadn't actually eaten anything since lunch, but found it difficult to negotiate the crowd because people kept patting her on the back and hugging her.

"Thanks, Roxanne," she said, after a particularly violent embrace from her cousin, and dodged sideways to grab a custard tart. A curious feeling welled up in her stomach, as though something was spreading its wings inside her. Too late, she recognised the tart as one of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes' Canary Creams.

Monica put on some loud and pleasantly vapid music while Lily finished moulting, and she found her arm being taken by Carter. "Fancy a dance, champ?" he asked, with a look of barely-concealed envy.

"Sure." Her moves were famously terrible, but she was feeling cheerful enough not to care.

"Come on, Potter, you can do better than that!" he cried as she attempted some halfhearted footwork. He took her hands and moved them along with his own.

"Carter – I'm really sorry about Quodpot, you know," she said.

"Don't worry about it. I guess you really are off the team now, though."

"Yeah, I don't expect I'll have time. When's the next match?"

"A couple weeks. Ravenclaw and Slytherin."

"Well. I hope it goes well."

"Me too! And listen – Lily, you better win that tournament."

"I'll do my best," she said, tentatively. It all seemed a little terrifying now that it had actually happened.

Caius Bilgeman managed to corner her with gruesome tales of the fates of previous champions, and it took Hugo to rescue her and force some more food down her. "I don't think these ones will turn you into anything."

"Thanks." She sank into an armchair. "When do you think the family will find out?"

"Soon. You should prepare yourself."

The morning brought an avelanche of letters from various members of the Weasley clan.

_I'm sure you'll find it a very beneficial experience, _read Hermione's letter, followed by Ron's slightly more optimistic _we know you'll smash them. _Percy was keen to make her aware of the fact that _it'll open up countless doors to you, career-wise_ and James called her a _lucky old hag_, which was his way of congratulating her.

Finally came the letter from her parents. _Darling Lily, _it began, _we are so proud of you. We have every confidence that you will shine in the tasks ahead. If you need anything,if you have any worries at all, remember we are here for you and you can talk to us at any time – although of course you'll be absolutely fine! Dad has just managed to round up some idiots who've been dabbling with cursed objects so we're having a fairly quiet time at home. Looking forward to seeing you at Christmas (we're still trying to work out how to fit everyone in!). Lots of love from Mum and Dad._

Lily folded it up and put it in her pocket. It was lovely to have so much support, but it did mean an awful lot of people to let down if she failed. Still, right now she didn't have to think about it. She had plenty of time.

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><p>The first challenge was to be held on the thirtieth of November – less than a month away. Lily didn't know what it was going to be, and wouldn't until the day of the challenge.<p>

"Which means," said Hugo, during a particularly dull Charms class some days later, "That you should be paying extra attention in your Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. In all your lessons, actually."

Evangeline snorted. "He's just saying that so that you can help him with his homework. And speaking of paying attention, could somebody tell me what we're actually doing here?"

Lily sighed and pointed at the blackboard, which read _Advanced Fire-Making Charms. _"Come on, let's get some work done."

"But we've already done fire-making charms, I know all this!" exclaimed Hugo.

Professor Flitwick emerged from behind him, scowling, and asked Hugo sharply whether he would please demonstrate the correct way to set his desk on fire, if he really felt he was wasting his time?

"Professor, I've never done anything that big!" said Hugo, and sighed, giving his wand an imploring look as though begging it not to let him down. He waved it gingerly. "_Incendio!"_

Hugo was looking severely singed around the edges by the end of the lesson, and the rest of the class hadn't managed much better. Even Lily, who usually managed to catch on fairly quickly, was having trouble producing precisely the right size flame.

"Homework: _practise_," said Professor Flitwick firmly, before dismissing them. Lily, Evangeline and Hugo headed towards their respective classrooms, but Lily hadn't got far before she heard a shout behind her.

"Lily!"

She spun round. "Oh, hi, Susie."

"What lesson have you got?"

"Arithmancy." She increased her pace: her classroom was on the opposite side of the castle. "Sorry," she said, "You know Professor Sestas, she'll give me a detention if I'm late."

"Don't worry, I know a shortcut."

"Really?" Lily tried to visualise the Maruader's Map, which was at the bottom of her bag. She couldn't think of any quicker way than the route she was already taking, over the courtyard to the West Wing.

"Yes, this way." Susie swerved to the left and ducked under the arm of a suit of armour to open a tiny door hidden in the wall. She looked so eager that Lily couldn't ignore her and followed, although she had a suspicion that the passage behind the door led to a disused classroom several corridors away. Still, you never knew with Hogwarts. It could have changed from one day to the next.

They were bent double in the passage; there was no light so Lily lit her wand. "Thanks," said Susie, then, "It's not much further."

A few moments later they straightened up, blinking. Lily recognised the disused classroom she had expected, and felt a surge of annoyance towards Susie, which she quashed. "I don't think this is anywhere near my Arithmancy class. Look, I really have to run now..." She made for the door.

"Oh dear, I'm really, really sorry," said Susie, following her, "I didn't mean to make you late."

As they turned into the corridor they heard a familiar cackling sound, and Lily's stomach sank. "Peeves," she muttered, retreating into the classroom so that he wouldn't see her. She was a second too slow.

"Looky who it is! Baby Potty and her ickle friendikins!" He blew an enormous raspberry, which propelled him downwards so that he was floating just in front of them. Susie grasped Lily's arm.

"Go away, Peeves," said Lily calmly. If she didn't give him a reaction he might leave her alone.

It didn't work.

"_Why, Potty's quite dotty, but you must sympathise_

_For her dad is the cause of Lord Voldy's demise._

_And she's just a kiddy who'll never catch up:_

_She's not got a shot at the Triwizard Cup."_

Peeves circled around her, giggling, and she swatted at him angrily. "I said get lost!"

"Temper, temper, little itty-bitty Potty. Don't go throwing any tantrums."

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"What's the matter? Need your nappy changing?

Ink pellets were soaring through the air at the pair of them. Lily grabbed Susie's hand and pulled her down the corridor, deciding that it was best to get away before he started flinging anything bigger. His squeals echoed after them, ink ricocheting off the walls, but after a while they began to get fainter.

Susie leaned back against the well, panting, dark blue dripping from her hair. Looking closer, Lily realised that she was trembling. "Are you OK?"

"I just – I really _hate _Peeves," said Susie. She looked close to tears.

"Oh, yes. Sorry." Susie was notoriously terrified of the school poltergeist, now Lily came to think of it. On the day of their Sorting Ceremony she had locked herself in a broom cupboard after being bombarded with chewing gum, and Professor Mottershead had had to coax her out herself. "Do you want me to take you to anyone? The hospital wing?" Susie really was starting to look ill.

"No... I'm fine. I'm fine." She shook her head, staring at the floor.

"All right," said Lily, "If you're sure." With Professor Sestas's temper, she had no desire to be any later than she already was.

Lily headed down the corridors at a jog, wondering whether she'd done the right thing. Susie did tend to be melodramatic, and it wasn't as though she hadn't already done her fair share of taking her to the hospital wing. She'd be OK. It was Sestas she really had to worry about – she increased her pace in the direction of the Arithmancy classroom, which her detour had taken her even further from than before.

She ran out of the door into a courtyard awash with cold afternoon sun, and almost careered straight into Professor Longbottom, tendrils of a large, spiky plant spilling out of his arms. "Watch it, Lily," he called. "Late again, I see."

She stopped, her chest heaving. She couldn't have gone on much longer anyway. "What – what have you – what have you got there?"

"Aha." He tapped the side of his nose. "If I told you that, I'd have to kill you. But I will say, you'd do well to stay clear of the Quidditch pitch from now on."

Lily didn't think she'd have much trouble following this instruction – she wasn't on the team anyway, even when the Quidditch Cup was on. "OK," she said, regaining some of her breath. She was so late now that it scarcely mattered how fast she got there. "Will do."

A minute Hufflepuff with outsize ears and a mop of blonde hair came trotting down the steps into the courtyard. He caught sight of her and hurried over. "Lily Potter? I'm supposed to give you a message. You need to go to classroom twenty-nine for – um – the weighing thing. I don't know. But you have to go now!"

"Oh," said Lily, perplexed. "OK. Um, thanks." The boy left, looking immensely pleased with himself for having remembered as much as he had of the message. She turned and set off in the direction she had just come from.

"Good luck!" called Professor Longbottom as he struggled out of sight with the plant.

_Good luck?_ Where was she going that she needed luck for? How did Professor Longbottom know about it when she didn't? She went up the main stairs and then another spiral staircase, which squeaked, "Hurry up, your lesson started ten minutes ago!". She kicked it and stubbed her toe.

She approached classroom twenty-nine at a limp, still trying to work out what could possibly await her inside it. Was she in trouble? If so, why did they need to weigh her? Maybe the school were worried about her health. Maybe they were conducting some twisted dietary experiment, and had chosen her to take part...

Lily tapped on the door of the classroom. To her surprise, it opened at her touch and she slipped in. A wall of noise hit her: several people were talking loudly and quickly and moving bits of furniture. Beau and Vulchanov were sitting on high-backed chairs at the front of the room, a mousy photographer bent over a tripod opposite them. As she watched, a puff of mustard-yellow smoke escaped the camera and he cursed loudly.

"Lily, at last. Just come and sit up here." A hand on her back was guiding her towards a vacant chair beside Beau. She glanced over her shoulder and found Scorpius smiling at her.

"Hi," she said, still unclear what was going on. She sat down. "Um – what am I doing here?"

He frowned. "Didn't the little Hufflepuff explain?"

"He – well, he was a bit unclear."

"Ah. Well then. This part of the Tournament is what's known as the 'Weighing of the Wands'."

"Oh! So that was what he meant by 'the weighing thing'."

Scorpius laughed. "Maybe I could have picked a more reliable messenger. But anyway, all they're going to do is fiddle around with your wand for a bit – it's all ceremonial, nothing to worry about – and then they'll interview you and take some photos. That's why Rita's here." He gestured to a woman with peroxide-blonde hair piled teeteringly on top of her head. Lily recognised Rita Skeeter of the Daily Prophet. "Now her you _do_ have to worry about."

"All right," came a wheezy voice from across the room, "Are we ready to start?" Waldemar Waffling strode over to where the three champions were sitting. A tall woman with brown hair streaked rather elegantly with grey followed, whom Lily recognised as Madam Reed, the wandmaker from Diagon Alley.

Rita and the photographer positioned themselves around the champions.

"Shall we have Mr Vulchanov first?" said Waffling, moustache twitching.

Lily saw Vulchanov's eyebrows draw even closer together. He stumped up to the front and handed his wand to Madam Reed. She took it and held it between her thumb and forefinger with an expression of marked distaste.

Madam Reed cleared her throat. "You certainly haven't been smothering it with love and attention," she said, "A good polish now and then wouldn't go amiss. However..." She held the wand up and examined it in the light. "Thirteen and three quarter inches, brittle... Blackthorn and dragon heartstring, I think?"

Vulchanov nodded.

"_Ebullio!" _She sent a stream of bubbles floating around the room and nodded, satisfied. "It seems to work fine," she said, handing it back to Vulchanov, "But I would give it a clean once in a while, if only in the interests of hygeine."

Vulchanov sat back down again. "Very good, very good," said Waffling, "Let's see – Miss Potter, do you want to go next?"

Lily didn't, much, but she went and handed over her wand obediently. Madam Reed turned it over in her hand. "Aha," she said, "One of mine. A particularly superior specimen, though I do say so myself. Spruce, ten and a quarter inches, _very_ slightly bendy. And – dragon heartstring as well, was it? Powerful wand. Good, you should have no problems with this, no problems at all... _Arcus Pluvius."_ A rainbow erupted from the tip of the wand, flooding the room with multicoloured light. Madam Reed returned it to Lily.

Beau went last: "Hazel and unicorn hair, twelve inches," said Madam Reed promptly, "Beautiful wand, especially for charms. Quite tractable. Nice to see that _somebody –" _she cast a dirty look at Vulchanov – "Takes good care of their wand." She waved it and turned the curtains from crimson to turquoise. "This is in perfect condition, absolutely perfect."

Beau sat back down again. Waffling's moustache twitched violently and he looked as though he might be about to say something, but Rita Skeeter beat him to it. "Lovely," she said, baring lipstick-smudged teeth in what was clearly supposed to be an endearing smile. "Let's get down to the real business now, shall we?"

She snapped open a crocodile-skin handbag, fingernails clacking against the clasp, pulled out a virulently green quill and began to fire questions at Beau while the quill took notes. The photographer focused his camera on Lily, shook it, and uttered a few splendid swearwords when it emitted a loud _bang _and split down the middle.

Lily took the opportunity to have a closer look at at Rita. She had the appearance of an older woman desperately trying to cling on to what was left of her youth. Her forehead was so thick with foundation that it cracked when she frowned, and her robes were almost blindingly pink. She had dark, heavy eyebrows which contrasted highly with her platinum hair.

"All right, Miss Potter? If you'd just turn this way... That's right, look at the camera..." The photographer had managed to fix his camera, although a lethal-looking sludgy substance was dripping from one of the corners. Lily positioned herself as he directed her. "I'm Dennis Creevey, by the way," he said. "I don't suppose – I don't suppose your father's ever mentioned me?"

"Oh – Dennis Creevey? Of course! Colin's brother?"

She almost clapped a hand over her mouth. At the mention of his brother, Dennis's face fell.

"Sorry," she ventured, biting down on her bottom lip. "I didn't mean –"

"Don't worry. It's all right – well, no – actually, it's tragic. Many, many brave people died during the war – too young, all of them. Especially Colin. But so many more would have died without your father." He gave a loud sniff, which she pretended not to notice for politeness's sake. "He's a great man."

"I know." She thought back to what her parents had told her of Dumbledore's Army. "So was Colin."

"He was – he was,"said Dennis, pulling himself together and taking several snaps of her with his malfunctioning camera.

Before she could say anything further, Lily was taken firmly by the arm by Rita Skeeter, who steered her into a chair a little way away from everyone else. "Mind if I have a word, Lily?" she asked, quill poised in midair.

"Er, OK."

Rita settled back in her chair and nodded at the quill, which began to scribble.

"I haven't said anything yet!"

"What?" said Rita absently.

Lily pointed at the quill. "How can it be writing if I haven't said anything?"

"Don't worry about that," replied Rita sharply. "Just focus on me. Now. Daughter of the famous Harry Potter, following in his esteemed footsteps as Hogwarts champion for the Triwizard Tournament – you must feel you have a lot to live up to."

"Well, yes, I –"

"How do you feel? Scared? Vulnerable? Inadequate?"

"I think – excited, really. I mean, I wanted to do it, I put my name in voluntarily –"

"Mm, of course. Naturally. You must be feeling fenced in, pressure on all sides, perhaps wishing you had parents with more time to devote to you and your needs..."

"Not really, they're actually very –"

"Good, good, that's lovely." Rita waved a gold-taloned hand, stopping her mid-sentence. "We'll finish there."

"But you haven't listened to a word I've said!" protested Lily. The quill was still scribbling away happily. Rita gave a loud, false giggle and patted her on the head, incensing her further. "You haven't even asked me anything about myself! I'm not my dad, you know."

Rita seemed not to hear, and snatched up her quill to bustle over to Vulchanov. Lily wished her luck getting more than a couple of syllables out of him – but then, she thought crossly, it didn't really matter what he said.

Beau came over and took Rita's vacated seat. "She is _une diablesse, _zat woman," he hissed to Lily, looking pointedly at the journalist.

"_Elle est affreuse," _agreed Lily, nodding furiously. "She's awful . And you came all the way to Hogwarts, just for this?"

"_Oui, _I came only to be talked at by her. Ozzerwise I could be at Beauxbatons, practising for ze challenge."

"_Tu déj__à__ pratiques?" _Lily's stomach dropped several feet. "You're practising already?" She hadn't even thought about it yet: she'd been putting it off, telling herself that since she didn't know what the challenge was, there was nothing to practise.

Scorpius pulled up a chair beside Beau. "How did you two get on with Rita?"

Beau scowled, his perfect lips drawing into a little pink bow. "I would like to put my 'ands around her neck – like _so_ – and..." He mimed strangling her. Lily stifled a giggle.

"You're certainly not alone there," said Scorpius.

"But I don't understand," said Lily, "How can she write anything about me? I said about two words."

"Oh, don't worry. She has her ways."

"You mean she'll just make it up?"

"I mean exactly that."

Rita had finished already with Vulchanov, and, snapping her bag shut, called, "All right, shall we just have one more photo with everybody? Beau, dear, if you would just step to the front... Lovely."


	7. Dungbombs and Disputes

**Look at me, I'm on fire! This is a short one, but there are more coming, I promise. I don't own Harry Potter! And I like feedback :)**

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><p>The article appeared in the <em>Prophet <em>several days later, taking up all of the front page and a double-page spread in the middle of the paper. "Look, Lily," said Hugo over breakfast, "It's you!"

Evangeline snatched it from him and began to read. She snorted loudly, spraying bits of porridge over the table.

"What?" asked Lily.

"'_Lily Potter is, some might think, an unlikely choice as Hogwarts champion,'" _read Evangeline, adopting an uncannily reminiscent pout and high-pitched voice, "'_But of course, being the daughter of the great Harry Potter must have its benefits. It would, however, be fair to say that Lily has very little of her father's heroic nature, and one would be foolish to expect a Hogwarts victory from a champion whose family history has got her thus far."_

"But that's ridiculous!" exclaimed Hugo, grabbing the paper back from her, "Everybody knows the Goblet chooses the champion, and it's an unbiased judge. It doesn't give a hoot who Lily's father is."

"Yeah, but you're reckoning without the average intelligence of Rita Skeeter's readers," said Evangeline, "Which would probably make a flobberworm look brainy. They'll believe anything she writes."

Lily nodded. "But it doesn't really matter what she writes about me, does it? I mean, the more hopeless she makes me seem, the better I'll look after the first challenge, assuming that I don't totally flop – and anyway, if I do, at least nobody will have been expecting better of me."

"That's one way to look at it," said Hugo. "Although I hope you know that _we're_ expecting better of you."

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><p>The days were beginning to gather pace at an alarming rate: alongside her worries about the Tournament, Lily had a gargantuan amount of homework, which she and her fellow sixth years were struggling to keep on top of. The teachers seemed oblivious to this and kept giving them more, docking points from anyone who dared point out that their NEWTs weren't for another year and a half.<p>

The year's second Hogsmeade weekend provided a rare opportunity for free time. Lily had hoped to spend it clutching a steaming Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks, as the temperature had dropped abruptly over the last few days. The other Gryffindors, however, had different ideas: Hugo and Caius absented themselves speedily for reasons she suspected had something to do with Rosamond Ellis; Carter went to the Quidditch shop with Oonagh; Monica and Susie dragged Anthony along with them to Melusine's Sartorial Emporium; and Evangeline went in pursuit of fresh Dungbomb supplies.

"Surely you have Dungbombs coming out of your ears by now?"

Evangeline tapped her nose. "Enough Dungbombs is never enough, my friend. Coming?"

"No thanks, my uncles pretty much gave me the whole shop for my birthday."

"True. See you later then."

They went their separate ways, and Lily found herself in search of company. She strolled down the high street, which was beginning to show traces of frost, until she came across Ruth Douglas and a huddle of other Ravenclaws. "Hi Ruth," she called.

"Oh! Hi, Lily. Where are you heading?"

"I'm not actually sure," she admitted, rubbing her hands together for warmth. "You?"

"I was going to Weasleys' with these guys, but to be honest I could pass." Ruth glanced in the direction of the shop with distaste.

"Not much of a practical joker?"

"No, not really. No offence to your uncles," she added, and Lily assured her none was taken, finding this attitude refreshing compared with her family's survival-of-the fittest mentality.

"So do you want to go to the Three Broomsticks or somewhere?"

"Sure," smiled Ruth. "I'll see you later," she said to her friends, and they set off down the road together. "Actually – why not go to the Hog's Head? It'll be less busy."

"Good thinking." They changed course, doubling back and heading down a side road until they reached the pub's tattered faҫade.

As they approached the door, something caught the corner of Lily's eye and she turned to look. A girl with long, pale reddish hair and soaring legs was walking down the opposite side of the street – in their direction, without having seen them. "Dom!" she yelled. "Dom!"

Her cousin stopped dead for a moment, assuming an expression like a startled rabbit's. Then she rearranged her features and crossed the road. "Lily! What a surprise. What are you doing here?"

"It's Hogsmeade weekend."

"Oh, of course."

"What about you?" asked Lily. "You look nice," she noted. Dom's habitual dress code was jeans and a brightly-coloured shirt, but today she appeared to be wearing a dress – rather an elegant dark green dress, accompanied by a pair of heels.

"Do I?" Dom responded vaguely. Lily restrained herself from rolling her eyes: with her Veela genes her cousin looked, as usual, breathtakingly beautiful. "I'm just up here for an appointment."

"What kind of appointment?"

" Nothing very interesting, I'm afraid."

"Oh. Well, you should join us for a drink afterwards. This is Ruth, by the way. Ruth – my cousin Dominique."

The two exchanged greetings, but Dom grimaced, saying, "I can't, Lily, sorry, I'm on a tight schedule."

"All right, another time." She exchanged a look with Ruth as Dom clacked away in her surprising choice of footwear. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Something's up with Dom. She's dressing weird. Acting weird. "

"Lily, I don't know your cousin, but she seemed pretty normal to me."

"_Exactly._" Lily glanced back over her shoulder, to where Dom was disappearing round the corner of the street. "I think we need to follow her."

Ruth snorted. "I think we need to get Butterbeers and let her mind her own business. Come on."

Lily was shepherded through the door by her friend, her mind still working furiously. There was a limited number of businesses in Hogsmeade – if she went through them all she'd be sure to find out what Dom was doing. She could find a list on her Hokumputer...

Ruth ordered two Butterbeers, then leaned over, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Everyone deserves privacy, you know," she said, "Even if their last name is Weasley."

Lily slumped back and nodded. "I suppose so. I suppose even the Potters deserve privacy sometimes."

"Somebody should try telling that to Rita Skeeter."

"You saw the article, then." The very thought of it made her groan. "Still – it's the kind of information Fred would pay me for. Dom doing shady dealings in Hogsmeade..."

"I doubt they're at all shady," replied Ruth. "But from what I've seen of your cousin Fred, I'd keep it to myself."

She laughed. All in all, it was pretty sound advice. The waiter arrived with a pair of dusty-looking Butterbeers, and they passed a pleasant hour or so chatting away in the window seats, comfortingly separated from the cold by a sheet of glass.

At length, Evangeline stepped through the door, blowing hot air onto her fingers. "This is where you've been! I've been looking everywhere. Hi," she said to Ruth.

Lily shot her a look, which she hoped communicated that it was socially inappropriate to mention the disappearing body parts. "Didn't they have any Dungbombs?" she asked, gesturing Evangeline's empty arms.

"No. Not the kind I needed." Evangeline was looking faintly disgruntled. "You know what? I'm ready to go back up to the castle, if you are. I have homework."

Lily sighed. So did she – in fact, she hadn't _not _had homework since the first day of term. "All right then." They said goodbye to Ruth, who went to find her Ravenclaw friends, and traipsed back up the hill.

She considered telling Evangeline about Dom, but then thought the better of it. Evangeline was even nosier than she was, and Ruth had convinced her that the best thing to do would be forget all about it. After all, what was there to tell? They made their way up to the Gryffindor common room in relative silence, then collected their books and nabbed a table in the corner.

"Right." Evangeline flung open an enormous book entitled _Divination at NEWT Level: thirty-two ways to predict what's coming. _"Let's see... Ouja boards." She sucked the tip of her new quill and started writing.

Lily decided to practise her Vanishing, which was desperately in need of improvement. She read up on the theory first, then took out her wand and spent a good ten minutes trying to Vanish Evangeline's right shoe.

"Hey!" cried Evangeline when she finally succeeded.

"Sorry," said Lily, realising that she didn't know how to get it back.

"For that you can help me with my Divination."

"What? But you know my Inner Eye is all shrivelled and disfigured. Professor Presage told me in third year."

"I want to test the Ouja board on you." Evangeline reached into her bag and pulled out a smooth wooden board bearing the letters of the alphabet in almost illegibly curly writing, and decorated elaborately around the edges with pictures of skulls. A large five-pointed star adorned the top. "Ask it about something in the future."

"Um," said Lily. But she knew what she wanted to ask – of course she did. "What's the first task going to be?"

Evangeline muttered an incantation, prodding each point of the star as she did so. She sat back and waited expectantly.

"It's not doing anything."

"Wait!"

Just as Lily was beginning to wonder whether Evangeline's Inner Eye might be as shrivelled as hers was, she saw the letter 'A' light up with a curious greenish glow. She leaned forward to watch: more letters lit up, flashing one after the other, forming words. Evangeline wrote down each letter as it came up.

Once it had finished, she held up her piece of parchment and read, "'_A surprise.'"_

Lily burst out laughing, although truth be told she had rather been hoping that it would give her an idea of what was left. "It's certainly got attitude."

"It hates me. The stupid thing actually despises me, I swear." Evangeline began searching her textbooks for a suitable hex to use on the board, but it was saved from her wrath by the arrival of Monica, Anthony and Susie, each clutching a bulging shopping bag.

"Find anything nice?" asked Lily.

"If you're talking about a certain Potions professor then, yes, Monica found him," replied Anthony, scowling. He threw himself onto a chair, kicking the bag he'd been carrying in his girlfriend's direction.

"Oh, come on, Anthony, I said I was sorry," Monica said irritably.

Anthony ignored her and continued to the rest of them, "Monica seems to think that ogling her Potions teacher in front of her boyfriend is a nice way to spend her Saturday afternoon."

Lily and Evangeline shot each other panicked glances: it was so unlike Anthony to be anything other than affable that he must be absolutely fuming; and neither of them wanted to get in the middle of a domestic between their two classmates.

"That's not true. It's a joke, and anyway, we barely even glimpsed him!"

"Oh, it's a joke? All right then. It's hilarious. Ha ha."

"He was heading out of the shop as we were going in, so of course I said hi, and you've been sulking ever since –"

"Monica, you were practically drooling on him! And it didn't seem to bother you if I was sulking, you still bought up half the shop –"

"There was a sale on!"

Susie began to edge towards the portrait hole, muttering something about Herbology homework. Lily and Evangeline quickly followed her lead and fumbled for excuses –

"I forgot to reply to Rose's letter."

"I think my cat might be dead, I heard it sneezing earlier."

Their withdrawal barely seemed to register with their two friends, who continued arguing at a mounting volume as they left Gryffindor Tower. They met Hugo and Caius heading in the opposite direction and warned them, so that the four of them ended up waiting out the afternoon in the library – something of a novel experience for Caius.

At dinnertime, Susie appeared with a swollen-eyed Monica and delivered the news in a whisper: "They broke up. She's devastated."

"Oh Merlin." Lily exchanged a panic-stricken glance with Evangeline. "Prepare for the waterworks."

* * *

><p>After that, the sixth-years began spending less and less time in Gryffindor Tower. Lily, Evangeline and even the usually solicitous Oonagh found themselves exposed to one too many of Monica's sobbing fits, and resolved to avoid their dormitory except when strictly necessary for sleeping purposes, creeping in and out at ungodly hours in order to leave the onerous task of comforting her to Susie.<p>

"He's such a Neanderthal," she was overheard howling, tearing into yet another box of chocolates. "Why are boys so _insensitive_?"

Anthony, meanwhile, had entered a phase of sulking so advanced that Caius developed a theory that he'd actually become a Dementor. "He's sucking all the happiness out of me," he told them through a mouthful of lemon meringue pie. "I'm really depressed. Look, I'm not even enjoying this."

"He's unhappy," Hugo protested; and it was true, their friends were both desperately unhappy. But since there was little they could do except supply Monica with tissues – "and learn to cast a Patronus for Anthony," Caius advised – and wait for them to sort it out between themselves, they agreed that the best strategy was to absent themselves as much as possible and hope it blew over soon.

Lily found herself spending more and more time in the library, a favourite haunt of Ruth's, who turned out to be far more useful in helping her prepare for the challenge than the panicky Hugo or the totally complacent Evangeline.

"They won't do anything airborne, because they did Hippogriffs last time and it didn't go down well," she said, dumping a stack of books in front of Lily. "I think your best bet is to look through the records of past challenges and try to prepare from those."

"That's clever," said Lily. "I mean, the Ministry isn't exactly famed for its creativity."

Ruth smiled and flung open a particularly hefty tome. "There hasn't been a water-based challenge in a while, so you should work on casting spells underwater – non-verbally, preferably."

"Ugh." Lily pressed both hands to her forehead. "Don't even joke about non-verbal spells. I haven't started that essay for Professor Quirke yet."

Between mountains of homework, navigating the toxic atmosphere in Gryffindor Tower and attending the marginally less disastrous second Quodpot match, Lily managed to fit in a respectable amount of reading and practice for the challenge – at the cost of what remained of her sanity.

"How can Rose keep sending me photos of her holiday?" she moaned, clutching a photo of her cousin grinning in front of some exotic landmark . "Doesn't she realise I'm suffering?"

"Of course she realises you're suffering," said her cousin Roxanne cheerfully, looking up from the similar letter Rose had sent her. "She hasn't sent me photos. She's trying to make you jealous."

"What? Why?" Lily yelped, feeling betrayed.

"Because she's jealous of you," explained Hugo. "She never got a chance to do the Tournament, you know, and nor do most people."

Lily rolled her eyes. "That's so Rose, to go all passive-aggressive on me." But she got the message. Even if, right now, she would rather be lying on a beach next to her walking brain of a cousin than up to her eyeballs in complex spell theory, being champion was not something to complain about. It was an amazing opportunity which she still couldn't quite believe she'd snagged. And she was going to do whatever she could to be in with a chance of winning the thing.


	8. Herbology and Heroics

**I have returned, and I bring chapters! Well, I bring one chapter, but it's a pretty eventful one. As usual, I own nothing and I like feedback :)**

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><p>The final week before the task saw Lily making a last, heroic attempt to prepare for it.<p>

"You've got to stay hydrated," Hugo kept telling her, or, "Make sure you get enough sleep," while Ruth would turn up to Arithmancy or Transfiguration clutching piles of books in which she'd marked any pages she considered useful. Lily was suddently conscious of an overwhelming quantity of support – from friends, teachers, even the odd Slytherin. Homework deadlines became a little more flexible. Professors would drop handy tips and facts into conversation perfectly innocently, so that she only noticed later that they too were doing their best to secure a Hogwarts victory. Somehow, even the most delicious dishes at mealtimes seemed materialise near where she was sitting. It was a little, she thought – perhaps rather ungratefully – like being a racehorse that the whole school was betting on. And it was strange and not altogether unwelcome to have so much attention directed completely, exclusively at her.

Still, it wasn't as if there was time to bathe in the glory of it all. In what she regarded as a stroke of supreme genius, she spent every free second practising curses and hexes in the Room of Requirement, which obligingly transformed itself into a cosy place with plenty of mannequins to practise on and shelves of books containing grisly details of accidents befalling previous champions. More often than not she was accompanied by Evangeline, who was delighted to have an excuse to skip homework ("You need all the help you can get," she said, sending her Fanged Frisbee zooming round the room) – and sometimes by Hugo, for whom the Room provided a desk to write his Potions essays on ("My mum would kill me if she knew how behind I am.") Still the challenge seemed peculiarly distant, as though she were suspended in a sort of limbo and it would never actually come.

But come it did, and Saturday the thirtieth found Lily and the other champions gathered in the Quidditch changing rooms with their three headteachers, Waldemar Waffling and Hippolyta Plum, shaking with anticipation as they waited to discover, finally, what they would be facing.

"Professor?" Susie Pepper was standing in the doorway. Mottershead turned to look at her. "Professor Longbottom says they're ready, miss."

Mottershead nodded sharply. "Thank you, Miss Pepper. Run along and take your seat, now." Susie grinned at Lily and mouthed "_Good luck!" _before making off towards the stadium. Lily's stomach turned. What had she got herself into? She'd never had to take on so much as a Pygmy Puff. She needed more than good luck – she needed a miracle. She needed someone to come running in saying "The Tournament's off," so that at least she wouldn't have the chance to disappoint eveybody...

"All right, champions?" Waffling's wheezy voice cut through her panic. "It seems that everything is in order. So now, at last, is the time to enlighten you as to what you will be facing in the arena. Hippolyta, if you would?"

Ms Plum stepped forward and pulled herself up to her rather limited full height. "Your teacher, Professor Longbottom," she said, "Has very kindly agreed to assist the Department of Magical Games and Sports in constructing an obstacle course."An obstacle course? That couldn't be too bad, could it? "Throughout the course you will encounter magical plants of all shapes and sizes – your task is to make your way through them to get to _this_." She held up a slim purple baton. It was slightly iridescent, and glimmers of blue and green flickered on the surface. "It's been bewitched with a highly powerful Immobilising charm. The moment you touch it, the entire course will stop moving and you will be able to get out unharmed." She tucked the baton inside her robes. "All clear? Good. Well then. We'll be off to the judges' table. Good luck, chaps – see you in a bit." She winked, and then the three of them were out of the door, leaving the champions alone together.

_Plants. _That was all right – in fact, it was easy, gloriously, laughably easy. Lily wasn't taking Herbology for NEWT, but she'd got an E in her OWL and was perfectly well-informed on the basics. She'd be fine. _She'd be fine._

"Mr Belvidere?" Scorpius' head poked round the door. "You first, please."

Beau stood up: his face had paled to a papery hue and his bottom lip was clamped between his teeth, turning it even rosier than usual. As he walked out, Lily noticed that his knees were shaking.

This left just her and Vulchanov in total silence. "Nervous?" she asked, in an attempt to break the tension.

"No."

She waited to see if he would say more. The seconds ticked past. "Are you good at Herbology then?"

"No, but I am velly good at blowing apart things."

She nodded, as though this were a rare and desireable skill to have. "That must be useful."

"Yes."

Seconds turned into minutes, and they could hear distant roars from the crowd. Perhaps Beau had managed to overcome his nerves – or perhaps it was simply his incompetence that was causing the noise.

At last, Scorpius appeared again, and this time it was Vulchanov that he escorted to the Quidditch pitch, leaving Lily completely alone. She wondered what sorts of plant she would have to get past. Devil's Snare, probably. Maybe some Fanged Geraniums – well, she could deal with those. She was going to be absolutely fine, she told herself again. Absolutely, completely fine.

All the same, when Scorpius finally came to get her she hadn't completely managed to squash the fear nibbling away at her insides.

"How bad is it?" she asked him, her mouth dry.

"You'll be fine," he said. _She'd be fine, fine, fine._

As they reached the entrance to the pitch, a witch in bright yellow robes stopped her and fixed a hairband-like contraption to her head. "What's that?" asked Lily.

"360-Pan Camera," replied the witch, "In case you get blocked from view, then the crowd can still see you. It'd get a bit dull for them if you spent the whole time behind a bush."

"Oh. OK."

"You might want to do something about your hair as well."

"Um – yeah." Lily flicked her wand and her waist-length auburn hair twisted itself into a plait.

Scorpius gave her a gentle nudge. "Ready?"

"Nope." She stepped out onto the pitch. It was almost unrecognisable.

The centre was so overgrown that it resembled a small, fidgety forest. An image flashed through her mind of James' face if he could see this transformation of his beloved pitch, causing her to smile briefly – then remember herself. She tried to make out the plants around the edge and felt a small surge of triumph as she recognised Devil's Snare.

The stands around the sides had been lowered considerably, the seating tiered to provide a good view for everyone. At the front was a long table where Plum, Waffling and Professor Mottershead were seated.

Every single pair of eyes in the entire stadium was trained on her.

She forced herself to move forwards, realised she was probably being timed, and went at a run. Tendrils of Devil's Snare began to twine around her ankles; she shot jets of fire at them and they recoiled. She ducked under a Screechsnap bough, dodging a few bouncing bulbs which launched themselves at her. More Devil's Snare, and this time it was thicker, stronger – she tried to keep it at bay but an enormous vine grabbed her round the middle and she was lifted into the air, struggling for breath, legs flailing. _"Incendio!" _she gasped, blasting it with such a strong burst of flame that she felt her skin blister and her eyes fill with tears. It thrashed around and dropped her several feet. She pulled herself up and pressed on in what she thought must be the right direction.

A ringing sound like Christmas bells sounded from behind her and she only registered what it was just in time to jump out of the way into a bush whose thick, fleshy leaves tried to pummel her senseless – Jingling Strangleweed, near-transparent thorny tentacles which liked to fasten themselves around human throats. They really were dangerous, she thought as she straightened up and ran on, keeping her ears open for the approach of any more – hopefully that was the worst she'd have to face.

She spotted bubotuber pods dangling above her and decided to keep clear of those as well. Fanged Geraniums snapped at her ankles and thick leathery shoots of Dragonwort sent bursts of flame at them – she ducked a branch with razor-sharp ridges of bark and found her face inches from a bloom of Venomous Tentacula. Her heart was pounding so hard she was worried it might drown out any more Strangleweed. A spidery acid-yellow vine sent her careering backwards, onto a Mimbulus Mimbletonia which promptly spurted her with Stinksap.

She was wiping the worst of the slime from her eyes when she saw it.

A wave of pure terror swept over her and she was momentarily paralysed: a fully-grown Mandrake root was sitting on a branch above her, its stubby legs dangling over the edge. Its face was screwed up as though it was about to bawl its lungs out.

She was going to die. The realisation hit her so quickly and with such force that she felt all the breath leave her, as though she'd been punched in the chest. She had no earmuffs, nothing to protect herself from its deadly cry; in a moment, it would scream and she would not exist any more.

She breathed in sharply – her last breath – and felt the oxygen rush to her brain. In an ecstatic, desperate moment, she knew what to do.

"_MUFFLIATO!" _she cried, brandishing her wand about herself madly. She stumbled backwards, gasping from fear. The Mandrake opened its mouth, it was howling at the top of its voice – but all she could hear was a faint buzzing. She bent over, laughing with relief.

A Venomous Tentacula vine grabbed her, pointed teeth gnashing menacingly in its massive flower. She pointed her wand at it, severed it from the main plant and staggered forwards as it fell to the ground limply. She must be nearly there by now – she just had to get out –

Something spiky was winding round her neck. Strangleweed. She pointed her wand at it, gasping "_Diffindo!"_, but it was difficult to get the incantation out properly when she couldn't hear her own voice. Instead she managed to make a gash in her own throat. "_Relashio!" _she choked, trying to pull it off with her hands – it worked. But the plant flew up into a bubotuber pod and Lily felt a searing pain in her left hand as she didn't quite dodge the pus in time. Bursting through more foliage, chased by a horde of Chinese Chomping Cabbages, she finally caught sight of the purple baton. She dived, and felt her stinksap-covered fingers close around it.

* * *

><p>"I swear, there was a Mandrake in there," Lily was saying, "A fully-grown Mandrake. I thought I was going to die."<p>

"And it was thanks to some very quick thinking on your part that you didn't," added Professor Mottershead. "Casting the _muffliato_ charm on yourself! I'm impressed, Miss Potter."

"Well, it almost got me killed by the Strangleweed," said Lily. She looked down at herself. She was in a horrific state: spattered with putrid, greyish stinksap, nasty boils emerging on her left hand and forearm from the bubotuber pus. She was bruised and aching, and her midriff and ankles were badly burned. Her neck was covered in small gashes and scratches, not least the one she had inflicted on herself; so were her hands where she had tried to rip off the Strangleweed. "But that Mandrake can't have been supposed to be there!" she said. "The Tournament is meant to be safe, there'd be tons of trouble if I got killed. And I wouldn't have stood a chance if I hadn't known that spell. We don't start Silencing Charms till next term."

Mr Waffling's moustache was in spasms. "You are perfectly right, of course, Miss Potter," he squeaked, "But – before we allow ourselves to be carried away, let us think rationally. The course was assembled by highly competent Ministry officials, and of course," he nodded at Professor Longbottom, "Your esteemed teacher. I think it unlikely – impossible – that something so lethal should have found its way into it. Are you sure you might not have been mistaken? You were, after all, under a great deal of pressure." He looked at her hopefully.

Lily was completely sure. "Anyway," she said, with a sudden realisation, "You all saw it too, didn't you? On the camera." She pulled off the Stinksap-soaked headband.

Ms Plum shook her head. "It was focused on you – all we saw was you looking terrified and then casting your spell."

Lily frowned. There was absolutely no way she was wrong – they'd been repotting the seedlings only last year. But they'd believe her when they came back from searching the course: she just had to wait.

She tried to shift the worst of the Stinksap, muttering "_Scourgify!" _under her breath. She was in considerable pain from her various injuries but would have to put up with it while they sorted everything out.

After a minute or two of urgent discussion amongst the adults, two wizards emerged from the course with earmuffs around their necks, carrying between them – yes – an Immobilised Mandrake. Waffling's moustache fell limp. "Dear Merlin," he breathed.

Mottershead's mouth was set in a hard, thin line. She turned to Lily. "There will, I'm sure, be a _very _thorough inquiry into this," she said, shooting a fierce glance at the Minister. "Meanwhile, Miss Potter – you've had quite a shock. Go and get Madam Bones to clean you up."

* * *

><p>"But neither of the other champions ran into it?" asked Evangeline, for what must have been the hundredth time. Two weeks after the challenge, the Ministry was still flummoxed as to how it had got there.<p>

"No," replied Lily, for the hundredth time.

"But the odds of that are – well, they're tiny. Even if they didn't see it it probably would've screamed at some point."

"So it must have got there after Vulchanov was done," said Hugo. He was adamant on this point. "It's the only explanation. And here's the question: is that just a coincidence? Was it an accident, or has somebody got it in for Lily?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Lily said, though she had to admit the though had struck her. "Who would want me dead?"

Evangeline shrugged. "Lots of people hate your dad."

Lily ignored this. She thought that if someone were indeed trying to kill her, she would prefer it to be because they hated her than because they hated her dad.

"Still, it turned out all right, didn't it?" said Hugo, grinning.

This was true. Lily had taken the shortest time negotiating the course, with Beau coming in second (he'd been badly burned by the Dragonwort and had to limp the second half). Vulchanov's ploy of blowing up anything he came into contact with had resulted in his being drenched in bubotuber pus and having to withdraw before completing the challenge.

Lily had a feeling the judges might not have been quite so generous towards her if she hadn't almost been exterminated – she had, after all, sustained a phenomenal number of injuries – but then, she'd got off reasonably lightly compared to the other two. And she had to admit, it felt incredible being in the lead.


	9. Robes and Roses

**Here's a nice long, rambly chapter as a contrast to that last one. Hope you enjoy it, and don't be afraid to drop me a review!**

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><p>For weeks following the first challenge, Lily found herself the centre of attention wherever she went. She spent a lot of her time hiding out in the Room of Requirement, where her fellow Gryffindors soon learned to look for her.<p>

"I think Anthony's starting to miss Monica more than he hates her," confided Carter one afternoon, while she and Evangeline sat slaving over their Charms work. This was corroborated by Susie, who added that Monica had barely mentioned Professor Calder in three weeks.

"Call Rita Skeeter, that's front page news!" was Lily's response.

"Let's just hope they make up soon and get the drama over with," sighed Evangeline, who was suffering from sleep deprivation avoiding Monica.

Lily was finally starting to catch up on her workload. Professor Sestas's death glares over her homework had subsided into mere raised eyebrows, and she was beginning to enjoy Arithmancy again, especially since the ever-solicitous Ruth had kept her up to date on all the notes.

"Ruth, you're a saint," she whispered, as Sestas prowled the room grasping her wand like a troll's club.

"Don't be daft, Lily. I want you to win, of course I'm helping you."

"Well, I'm grateful for it. And all the rest of your help. If I do win the Tournament it'll be thanks to you."

Professor Sestas stalked over. "Having a good gossip, are we, girls?"

"A lovely gossip, thanks miss," replied Lily, meeting her teacher's draconian gaze; then ducking as five jets of water shot simultaneously from her wand into the space where Lily's head had been. They hit Cong Li in the row behind her and Professor Sestas shrugged.

"Head down, Li, or it wouldn't have happened. Potter, Douglas – shut up."

Lily and Ruth settled down to the questions they'd been set, and it was a full ten minutes before Ruth ventured a muttered, "Lily."

"What?" she hissed back.

"Your cousin, Dom..."

"What about her?"

"I've seen her twice in the last few days."

"Where? At the castle?" Lily had to fight to keep her voice down – what had Dom been doing at Hogwarts?

"No, in Hogsmeade again. I was ordering medication at the apothecary for my – condition. And then I saw her when I went to pick it up yesterday."

"Oh."

"She was going into one of the houses, and I think you're right. She's up to something. I've never seen anyone look so shifty – collar turned up, tiptoeing, glancing over her shoulder the whole time..."

"She's never been a master of subtlety, Dom," said Lily. "What do you think we should do about it?"

"I don't know – I mean, whatever it is, it's her business. It just struck me as odd."

"You're right. Dom's the least secretive person you could imagine."

"I thought I should tell you. In case it's something to worry about."

Lily ran the conundrum past Hugo and Evangeline that evening, both of whom seized on it with glee.

"Maybe she's joined a cult."

"Maybe she's plotting to rob Honeydukes."

"If she is," said Lily, gravely, "She'd better save me some chocolate frogs."

"Still, there's nothing we can do about it," said Hugo, "Unless we put Fred on surveillance duty. And I don't think we should do that to Dom."

Lily agreed. Fred's surveillance network was a complex organism consisting of Extendable Ears, tiny cameras disguised as insects, sometimes a magical tracking device or two... Nobody could say he wasn't thorough in mapping out his pranks.

"Let's leave it, then. We can interrogate her at Christmas."

"If she hasn't been sacrificed to the sun god by that point," Evangeline pointed out. "Or arrested for her stash of stolen Fizzing Whizzbees."

Lily decided they'd take their chances.

* * *

><p>As December drew on and Christmas decorations began to appear around the castle, the first task ceased to be the only source of gossip for the school. This came as something of a relief to Lily, who was getting bored of people questioning her about it and had started inventing answers for her own amusement. "...And all the time I was in there, the Fanged Geraniums were singing the entire score of <em>Morgan Le Fay: the Musical <em>in four-part harmony," she would tell awestruck first years, while Evangeline lapsed into silent giggles behind her.

The new topic of discussion was the Yule Ball, which was to be held on December the twenty-third. "It's traditionally a very magical date," explained Professor Longbotton to Gryffindor house, "And it means that you'll all be able to go home to your families on Christmas Eve." This was good news, as Lily's parents were hosting that year's family Christmas, which promised to be crowded and extremely festive.

Three days before the ball, the foreign delegations returned and the gossiping began in earnest. It became impossible to walk down a corridor without hearing various permutations of "I heard so-and-so's going with so-and-so" or "So-and-so asked me but I said no because I'm hoping so-and-so will."

To her dismay, Lily's success in the first task made her a popular choice, and she had to employ every secret passageway and hidden door she knew of just to get to her lessons on time.

"It's pathetic," she told Evangeline loudly, as they passed a pair of gawping fourth-year boys with self-conscious hairstyles in the corridor. "All they want is to open the ball, and I'm planning on needing the loo for that bit anyway."

The boys both flushed and, exchanging glances, increased their pace.

"And deprive the world of your phenomenal dancing abilities? Lily, you wouldn't."

One positive outcome of the madness that now gripped the school was that Lily returned to the Common Room one evening to find Monica and Anthony entwined in an armchair in an obscene display of affection. "He's asked me to the ball," explained Monica, surfacing momentarily with a radiant smile.

"About time," muttered Carter, as she joined him on a sofa across the room from them. "They'll still be unbearable to be around, though, just for different reasons."

"You're telling me. Do you think we're ever going to unstick them?"

Carter cast his eyes in their direction and wrinkled his nose. "Doubtful."

"You coming to Hogsmeade tomorrow?"

"Nah, it'll be packed. You?"

"I think I'll have to – I grew out of my last set of dress robes about three years ago."

In the runup to the ball, the teachers had caved to popular demand and agreed to schedule an extra Hogsmeade date for the purpose of clothes shopping. Lily had extracted her dress robes from her trunk to find that they only came halfway down her calves, so planned to take full advantage of the day.

She set off as early as she could manage with Evangeline, hoping to avoid the hordes of Hogwards students who would be heading towards Melusine's Sartorial Emporium. Unfortunately, half the school seemed to have had the same idea, and they found themselves in a queue which stretched a fair distance down the high street.

"I can't be bothered with this," said Evangeline, after a few minutes. "I'd rather just turn up in jeans."

"No you wouldn't," responded Lily, though she had to admit that it was the sort of thing Evangeline might do. "We'll get in at some point," she added, without much conviction.

They waited for what felt like years, working their way painstakingly from the post office to Honeydukes two doors down in about half an hour. Friends intelligent enough to own a set of dress robes already kept passing them with smug looks, enjoying their free time.

"Go on then, Oonagh, rub it in!"

"Don't even start, Caius, we know how long you queued for a copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's last book – wait – what have you got there?"

Caius was looking oddly suspicious, clutching a large brown paper bag under his arm and carefully concealing the name of the shop.

"Nothing. Just a bit of grocery shopping."

"Groceries?" Lily snorted. "Giving the house-elves a hand then, are we?"

Caius assumed an air of wounded dignity. "_Some _of us are appalled by the discrimination against their noble race –"

"Oh, come on, where's the bag from?"

Grudgingly, he shifted his hand to reveal the logo of Belvoir Florist's, turning a shade of deep beetroot as he did so.

Evangeline pounced, and managed to open the bag and catch a glimpse of its contents before he could wrench it back. "Roses? Caius!"

"Roses for Rosamond?" guessed Lily, and his colour intensified.

"Oh, bog off, you two. You're just jealous because you haven't got anyone to go with."

"Nor have you, by the looks of things. When are you going to ask her?"

He scowled. "None of your business."

"Right," said Evangeline, "We'll have a packet of tissues on standby for you then."

This earned her the dirtiest look Lily thought she had ever seen Caius give. "You think she'll turn me down? Fat chance. She couldn't do better if she tried."

And he stalked off in the direction of the castle, holding the roses tightly against his chest as though he expected someone to swipe them when he wasn't looking.

"How do you think she'll do it?" mused Evangeline. "Play the 'let's be friends' card, or just call in the Aurors straight away?"

"I think she'll take one look at him and scarper. He has that deranged look, it's a little scary."

The queue gradually shifted them further up the street, until they were at the Apothecary. "Hold my place while I stock up on makeup?" Lily asked, gesturing to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes across the street. Evangeline agreed, so she went in and headed for the WonderWitch section, which was so packed there was hardly space to breathe. After a minute or two she gave up fighting to get to the lipstick and went to find Fred behind the counter in the main shop.

"Ah, my darling cousin. Here to make yourself gorgeous?" he asked, handing back change and signalling for the next customer.

"That's the plan," she replied, "Though actually I don't fancy my chances in the scrum over there, I'll head back outside."

"You can handle the Triwizard Tournament, but not the makeup aisle?" He threw some cosmetics into a shopping bag and passed it to a fifth-year Hufflepuff girl. "What did you want?"

"Red lipstick, the usual."

Fred flicked his wand and a small silver cylinder came flying towards them, causing a few yelps as it battered its way past the sea of heads. "That'll be nine sickles, four knuts."

"Thanks," she said, wondering why she hadn't thought of Summoning it. This magic-outside-school thing was taking some getting used to. She handed him the money and struggled back to the door, where she caught sight of Ruth walking in her direction. "Hi!"

"Oh, hi, Lily!"

"You here to buy dress robes?" she asked – although the idea of Ruth leaving anything to the last minute was laughable.

"No, I've already got them. I was going to try and pick up a pair of tights, but then I saw the queue..."

"Come and wait with me and Evangeline. We can start a sing-song or something, pass the time."

This idea didn't seem to fill Ruth with enthusiasm, but she joined them on the pavement, where the queue still stretched on for what seemed like miles.

"How about a round of I Spy?" Lily suggested – but before her friends could respond, Ruth gave a small gasp.

"Lily! It's Dom again."

"Where?" She whipped around. There was Dom's sheet of red-gold hair, disappearing round the bend of a nearby street. "Let's follow her."

Evangeline quickly agreed and their place in the queue was forgotten. Even Ruth's curiosity seemed to have been piqued enough that she didn't protest at being whisked up the road with them at some speed.

They reached a corner and Lily swung out an arm, stopping them so that she could lean out and check for her cousin's whereabouts. "She's not too far ahead. We've got a tree, a lamp post and some bins for cover, so let's just go carefully."

They crept along with as much stealth as they could muster, Lily frantically concocting excuses in case they were caught. They were visiting a friend. Which friend? Who lived around here? She wasn't sure. Scratch that. Dom had dropped something – they were returning it. What had she dropped? Nothing. That didn't work either. She had to face the facts – Dom would go ballistic if she caught them. Still, she really wanted to find out what was going on.

"Quick!" Evangeline hissed, pushing them down behind the dustbins as Dom stopped in her tracks and cast a wary glance over her shoulder.

"Thank Merlin one of us has reflexes," Lily whispered. She raised her head by degrees until she was peering over the bin lid. "She's walking again, let's go."

She and Evangeline stood up, but just as Ruth did the same her right leg vanished into thin air, and she fell with a deafening clang against the bin. Lily ducked back down, her heart pounding. "Are you OK?"

Ruth nodded. Her leg had reappeared, and she was rubbing the other knee where it had made contact with the metal. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Did she see us?" asked Evangeline, who had crouched back down as well.

"I don't know," responded Lily. "Let's give it a minute."

They sat in silence while Ruth recovered, and by the time they surfaced Dom was nowhere to be seen.

"Should we try round the corner?"

They tiptoed to the end of the street and checked to their left and right. No sign of Dom. She had disappeared into one of the buildings, and they had no way of knowing which.

"Well..." Evangeline folded her arms and blew some stray hair off her face impatiently. "That was successful."

"Mm." Lily wrinkled her nose. "I really wanted to know where she was going."

"Maybe you should just ask her," suggested Ruth.

"There's no point, she'd lie. Seriously – espionage is pretty much an accepted form of communication in our family."

As they walked back, it struck her that they'd lost their place in the queue. "I'm not starting from the back again," said Evangeline firmly.

"Fine, but there's no way I'm opening the ball in school uniform."

To get back to the high street they found themselves cutting through a road with a few slightly grubbier-looking establishments scattered along it. About halfway down they passed a shop with a dusty faҫade and a magnificent display of socks taking up most of the window, in an array of designs flamboyant enough to make Rita Skeeter's eyes water. "Gladrags!" squealed Evangeline, "I'd forgotten about this place!"

Gladrags Wizardwear was a treasure trove of eccentric items of clothing, where the two of them had sometimes bought birthday presents in the days when wearing flashing kitten patterns on your feet had been the height of good taste.

"It sells clothes – I say we go in," said Lily, pushing open the door and blinking to accustom her eyes to the gloom. There were racks and racks of lurid T-shirts and piles of indeterminate knitwear, and, at the back, a rail bearing some long, heavily-adorned garments in rich colours. "Dress robes!"

She and Evangeline made a beeline for the railing, while Ruth started picking through boxes of coloured and patterned tights for a plain black pair. She could see Evangeline's eyes gaining a sort of manic radiance at the assortment of robes they'd stumbled on. "How's this?" she grinned, holding up a fuchsia set with flower patterns in the masses of lacy skirts.

"Not as good as this." Lily pulled out a garment with outsize, multicoloured toadstools printed on it.

There were robes with ruffles and tassles and feathery bits; robes in neon yellow and nauseating florals; robes trimmed with fur and with sequins; robes with trains, robes with bows, robes with one sleeve and even one with three. Evangeline tried on a sack-shaped set in leopard print and a set sporting a large Elizabethan-style ruff, while Lily tried a salmon-coloured one with matching furry wings, which clashed horrifically with her hair.

"Not your finest look," conceded Ruth, who had long since found and paid for her tights. Lily trawled on through several railings concealed behind the first one, discarding gingham, polka dots and paisley out of sympathy for anyone who'd have to look at her. Eventually she dug out a floaty cream set, slightly crushed by the heavier fabrics either side of it. "Ooh – this is perfect!"

She tried it on. It had a cream lace panel for a bodice, a gently ruffled chiffon skirt, and long chiffon sleeves made from masses of fabric so that they melded with the skirt.

Ruth's face lit up. "That's really lovely!"

Evangeline concurred: "You should get it."

Taken aback by the ease with which she'd discovered it, Lily bought the dress, while Evangeline settled on a spangled navy blue one which could have been made with her in mind. They emerged into daylight feeling rather pleased with themselves. "I don't think I've ever had such a painless shopping trip," said Lily.

"I know – I love that place!"

"We'd never have found stuff like this in Melusine's. And look, the queue's barely moved." They were back on the high street, and students were still ranged along the pavement, looking even tetchier than they had an hour or so earlier. Nursing a sense of superiority, they carried on back to the castle, stowed away their treasures and went to get lunch.

The hall was only about half as full as on any normal day, with much of the school still stuck outside Melusine's. Nevertheless, Caius' entry as they polished off their baked potatoes caused quite a stir.

The roses they had discovered earlier were now spilling out of his arms in a mass of luxuriant scarlet. Caius himself – or what was visible of him behind the flowers – sported an ill-fitting navy suit, complete with waistcoat and pocket handkerchief. He walked with the kind of swagger that only Caius would employ without irony; purposefully, towards the Hufflepuff table.

"Oh dear. He's actually doing it," muttered Evangeline, as he reached Rosamond Ellis and lowered himself, in a flamboyant gesture, to one knee.

Lily produced an involuntary giggle. "What's he doing, proposing to her?"

A hush had fallen over the hall – the kind that occurs in an auditorium at the start of a play. Caius seemed as self-assured as usual with the attention, subtly repositioning his face to throw it into a better light as he launched into a declaration of his love. They didn't catch much of it – the occasional 'ravishing' and 'radiant' drifted across the room to them – but it was enough to tell that he really wasn't holding back.

After a minute or so, Rosamond – who had been sitting in stunned silence like the rest of them – stood up, frowning. She spoke a few words to Caius and then, gesturing to a couple of her friends, swept out, leaving him on the floor with armfuls of roses. He looked as appalled as if she'd physically slapped him.

"Do you think we should go and talk to him?" wondered Lily, taken aback at seeing her classmate so completely emotionally annihilated.

"I think we're probably the last people he wants to talk to. Maybe we should send Hugo," Evangeline suggested.

People seemed to be leaving the hall out of sheer awkwardness, and probably sympathy for the embarrassment Caius was suffering. Unable to help him, Lily and Evangeline decided to do the same.

* * *

><p>"She called me <em>pathetic<em>," Caius was telling Hugo in mortified sobs, incinerating roses one by one with his wand. Hugo patted his friend on the back and moved the rest of the flowers out of his reach, presumably in consideration of the fire hazard.

"I mean, you can tell why he's a Gryffindor," whispered Evangeline. "It was a brave thing to do. Blockheaded, but brave."

Lily sighed: "This ball is way more trouble than it's worth." Caius had been in hysterics all afternoon, and between him and Monica and Anthony's rekindled romance the atmosphere in the common room was unbearable.

"Any idea who you're going with yet?"

"No idea. I keep getting asked by weirdos I don't even know."

"You're going to have to say yes to one of them, you know," said Evangeline, "You can't open the ball on your own."

"But they're all idiots," responded Lily sulkily – earlier that afternoon, she had been accosted by a Durmstrang boy with a trickle of snot running down his face, who had called her Lizzie. "Anyway, they're not really interested in me. It's just because I'm the champion."

"And the problem with that is what, exactly? You only have to dance with them."

"It's all right for you," burst out Lily angrily, "You can just go with Hugo!"

Hugo went bright pink and Evangeline gave her a disgusted look.

"What?" she asked.

Hugo mumbled something, eyes fixed on the floor – "Already asked someone," was all Lily could catch.

Evangeline brightened up immediately. "Ooh, who?"

"Ask your Ouija board." He stood up, dragging Caius with him towards their dormitory.

"Oh no you don't," said Evangeline, pulling him back into his seat, "No rubbing it in Caius' face until you've told us who it is."

"Yeah, who?" said Lily, leaning forward. A thought struck her. "It's not Rosamond, is it?"

"No!" Hugo gave her a look of immense indignation. "You don't know her." He tried and failed to get up again. Then, rolling his eyes, he said almost inaudibly, "Svetlana Slovensky."

She turned out to be a blindingly blonde Durmstrang student with pointed, blood-red fingernails. "She looks like fun," whispered Lily to Evangeline, when Hugo finally pointed her out stalking through the Great Hall in soaring heels.

"She looks like she's got a necklace of her ex-boyfriends' teeth hidden under her top," hissed Evangeline back.

"How on earth did Hugo get her to go with him?"

"I don't know! Maybe she thinks he's cute."

"Or maybe she thinks his skin will make a nice handbag."

The thought of entrusting her cousin to this creature made Lily wonder if she should be teaching him some basic hexes for self-defence, but she had enough pressing concerns of her own: it was the day before the ball, and she was still looking for a partner.

She was roaming the hallways in a state of heightening anxiety when she was cornered by Beau. "_Salut," _she said, hoping to escape quickly because the situation was becoming quite deperate. She had half a mind to take up Caius on the offer he'd made her, with a resigned sigh, the day before.

"'Allo Lily. _Ҫ__a va?_" He flashed her a gleaming smile.

"Er, _oui. _Very well, thank you." She cast around for an excuse to get away. "I, um –"

"Do you want to come to ze Yule Ball wiz me?"

"What?" This wrongfooted her so entirely that she forgot she was trying to cut the conversation short. "Is that even allowed? I mean, we're both champions."

"I theenk eet will not be a problem."

Lily wondered how Beau had managed not to get a partner until now. But it did sort of make sense, her going with him – she certainly couldn't think of anyone she'd rather go with. "_Oui, j'irai avec toi._ I'll go with you," she said.

"His face broke into a beaming smile. "_D'accord. _I will see you tomorrow, then."


End file.
